Mitchell.

"Yes. You'll find it there at the foot of the bunk. There it is. Won't
you sit down, Mitchell?"

"Not to-night," said Mitchell. "We brought you a bottle of ale. We're
just going to turn in."

And we said "good-night". "Well," I said to Mitchell when we got inside,
"what do you think of it?"

"I don't think of it at all," said Mitchell. "Do you mean to say you
can't see it now?"

"No, I'm dashed if I can," I said. "Some of us must be drunk, I think,
or getting rats. It's not to be wondered at, and the sooner we get out
of this country the better."

"Well, you must be a fool, Joe," said Mitchell. "Can't you see? ALF
THINKS ALOUD."

"WHAT?"

"Talks to himself. He was thinking about going back to his sweetheart.
Don't you know he's a bit of a ventriloquist?"

Mitchell lay awake a long time, in the position that Alf usually lay in,
and thought. Perhaps he thought on the same lines as Alf did that night.
But Mitchell did his thinking in silence.

We thought it best to tell the Oracle quietly. He was deeply interested,
but not surprised. "I've heerd of such cases before," he said. But the
Oracle was a gentleman. "There's things that a man wants to keep to
himself that ain't his business," he said. And we understood this remark
to be intended for our benefit, and to indicate a course of action upon
which the Oracle had decided, with respect to this case, and which we,
in his opinion, should do well to follow.

Alf got away a week or so later, and we all took a holiday and went down
to Fremantle to see him off. Perhaps he wondered why Mitchell gripped
his hand so hard and wished him luck so earnestly, and was surprised
when he gave him three cheers.

"Ah, well!" remarked Mitchell, as we turned up the wharf.

"I've heerd of such cases before," said the Oracle, meditatively. "They
ain't common, but I've hear'd of such cases before."

A Daughter of Maoriland

A sketch of poor-class Maoris

The new native-school teacher, who was "green", "soft", and poetical,
and had a literary ambition, called her "August", and fondly hoped to
build a romance on her character. She was down in the school registers
as Sarah Moses, Maori, 16 years and three months. She looked twenty; but
this was nothing, insomuch as the mother of the youngest child in the
school--a dear little half-caste lady of two or three summers--had not
herself the vaguest idea of the child's age, nor anybody else's, nor
of ages in