lity. Ah, the regret that
consumed me that I had not risked the unpopularity of interference and
sought her confidence. I might have been able to have saved her from
such an end!

I kept my knowledge to myself. It would scarcely have hurt Mr Pornsch.
Under the British Constitution property is far more sacred than women.
But having a fatality in belief that there is a law of retribution in
all things, I hoped to be able to sheet this crime home to its
perpetrator in a way that should put him to confusion when he least
expected it.

There was ample money for burial among the girl's belongings, which
were taken in charge by the police, and there let the cruelly common
incident rest for the present.

The affair so upset Dawn that she refused to occupy her usual room any
longer, and at her suggestion she and I determined to occupy a big
upstairs room, up till that time filled with rubbish. This being
agreed upon we forsook the apartments opening into the river garden,
and betook ourselves to an altitude from which we had even a better
view of the valley, river, and trains.

Dawn so perceptibly went "off colour" that I persuaded her
grandmother to let the singing lessons begin by way of diverting her
mind.

The old lady would not contemplate paying more than two guineas per
quarter, so I saw a six guinea teacher, arranged with him to take the
pupil at four, two of which I privately paid myself, and Dawn at last
set out for the city for her first lesson in the arduous and
unattractive boo-ing and ah-ing that lie at the foundation of a
singer's art.

SIXTEEN.

ADVANCE, AUSTRALIA!

In the career of a prodigy there invariably comes a time when it is
compelled to relinquish being very clever for a child, and has to
enter the business of life in competition with adults.

This crisis had arrived in the career of the prodigy Australia.

It is at the time of electing new or re-electing old representatives
of the people to the legislature that the state of a country's affairs
is more prominently before the public than at any other, and preceding
the State election in which Grandma Clay was to exercise the rights of
full citizenship for the first time, it was a lugubrious statement.

That the country had gone to the dogs was averred by each candidate
for the three hundred a-year given ordinary State members, and each
described himself as the instrument by which it could be restored to a
state of paradisaical pros