and children, and fresh-dressed and (I am sorry to say) tight-laced maidens, and gay people in rich traps; upon the skirts of which Carthew and “the other blackguards”—­his own bitter phrase—­skulked, and chewed grass, and looked on.  Day passed, the light died, the green and leafy precinct sparkled with lamps or lay in shadow, and the round of the night began again, the loitering women, the lurking men, the sudden outburst of screams, the sound of flying feet.  “You mayn’t believe it,” says Carthew, “but I got to that pitch that I didn’t care a hang.  I have been wakened out of my sleep to hear a woman screaming, and I have only turned upon my other side.  Yes, it’s a queer place, where the dowagers and the kids walk all day, and at night you can hear people bawling for help as if it was the Forest of Bondy, with the lights of a great town all round, and parties spinning through in cabs from Government House and dinner with my lord!”

It was Norris’s diversion, having none other, to scrape acquaintance, where, how, and with whom he could.  Many a long dull talk he held upon the benches or the grass; many a strange waif he came to know; many strange things he heard, and saw some that were abominable.  It was to one of these last that he owed his deliverance from the Domain.  For some time the rain had been merciless; one night after another he had been obliged to squander fourpence on a bed and reduce his board to the remaining eightpence:  and he sat one morning near the Macquarrie Street entrance, hungry, for he had gone without breakfast, and wet, as he had already been for several days, when the cries of an animal in distress attracted his attention.  Some fifty yards away, in the extreme angle of the grass, a party of the chronically unemployed had got hold of a dog, whom they were torturing in a manner not to be described.  The heart of Norris, which had grown indifferent to the cries of human anger or distress, woke at the appeal of the dumb creature.  He ran amongst the Larrikins, scattered them, rescued the dog, and stood at bay.  They were six in number, shambling gallowsbirds; but for once the proverb was right, cruelty was coupled with cowardice, and the wretches cursed him and made off.  It chanced that this act of prowess had not passed unwitnessed.  On a bench near by there was seated a shopkeeper’s assistant out of employ, a diminutive, cheerful, red-headed creature by the name of Hemstead.  He was the last man to have interfered himself, for his discretion more than equalled his valour; but he made haste to congratulate Carthew, and to warn him he might not always be so fortunate.

“They’re a dyngerous lot of people about this park.  My word! it doesn’t do to ply with them!” he observed, in that RYCY AUSTRYLIAN English, which (as it has received the imprimatur of Mr. Froude) we should all make haste to imitate.

“Why, I’m one of that lot myself,” returned Carthew.

Hemstead laughed and remarked that he knew a gentleman when he saw one.