Old Billy was mostly to be found where there was a chance of a drink; but if the fountains were dried up, or he had been insulted by some democratic, revolutionary, king-hating miner knocking his high hat down over his eyes, he usually went up to Mr. Colborn’s place, and sat on the fence, or on a log outside the gate.  So he was often very melancholy when Annie came out.  One day his hat was very, very badly bulged indeed.

“Your hat is very bad to-day, King Billy,” said six-year-old Annie, as she stood in front of him critically, with her head on one side.  Without knowing it, the child had come to look upon the state of the poor king’s hat as emblematical of his state of mind.  When it shut up like a closed concertina his barometer was low.

“Yes, missy,” said the king; “white man knock ’um over eyes, and”—­with a rub down his face—­“skin ’um nose.”

She inspected his nose carefully—­though from a certain distance, because her own nose was very good, both inside and out, and she knew the king never got washed unless it rained when he was very drunk.  And this was the end of summer.  It had not rained since November.

“There is not very much skin off,” said Annie.  “You had better wash it.”

The king made a wry face and changed the conversation.

“You got ’um hat, Missy Annie?  One hat baal brokum, allasame white fellow hat.  Bad hat, King Billy bad; black fellow, white fellow laugh.”

He peered into his hat, and, trying to straighten it out, put his fist through the side.  Poor Billy looked as if he could cry.

“You stop a minute,” said Annie, and, flying indoors, she brought out a very good high hat indeed.  “Budgeree!” thought the king, that was a good hat.  He could go down the streets like a king indeed, able to hold up his head with any rich man in Ballarat.  He tried it on, and though it was much too big, he knew it shone.  And the glory of a hat is in its shining as much as its shape; even a black fellow knows that.

But that hat very nearly led to serious trouble.  For one thing, Mr. Colborn missed it; and never thinking Annie had given it away, when he saw the king sitting on the fence decorated with it, he stopped and interviewed him.

“Where did you get that hat, you old thief?” asked the magistrate, without any politeness to him who ruled the land before white men broke into the country.  Some in authority are polite to those they dispossess; the Prussians, for instance, to the miserable King Billys who strut about the empire.  But the Anglo-Saxon only respects himself, and even that to a limited extent, in new conquests.

The question troubled King Billy greatly.  He did not know that Mr. Colborn would as soon have thought of murdering Annie as of bullying her; so he lied promptly:  “Me buy ’um, Mistah Cobon!”

Mr. Colborn took it off of his head, and saw that it was his, as he had thought.  What he would have said I do not know, for just then he heard a voice behind him: