long
the highroad and the shunting of the engines at the station, so I
chimed in with promised support.

"Yes, good women have to continually suffer the degradation of your
type in all life's most sacred relations. They have to endure you at
their board and in their homes, and leering at their sweet young
daughters; and, alack! many in shame and humiliation own your stamp as
their father or the father of their sons and daughters. They have had
to endure it with a smile and hear it bolstered up as right, but those
whose moral illumination has taken place would be with us in armies
to-night if they could."

"I'm dying to give him a piece of my mind," said Carry, coming up.

"How do you like our little illustration of what we think of you?
We've done it out of a long smouldering resentment against your reign,
and this is a species of jubilation to find that the majority of
Australian men are with us, because in the vote they have furnished us
with a means of redress," and Carry finished her previously prepared
speech by throwing a clod of dirt on him.

"My grey hairs should have protected me," he muttered.

"You mean they should have protected Miss Flipp," said Dawn, "and when
a man with grey hairs carries on like this the crime is twice as
deadly. There was nothing about grey hairs when you used a lead comb
and got yourself up to kill. I thought you didn't want to make an
especial feature of them, and that's why I'm dyeing them this
beautiful treacley black. They'll look bosker when I'm done."

"Get up out of that, lest I'm tempted to do you a permanent injury," I
said, taking the broom off him.

"You can go to the stable," said Dawn, "and I hope you won't
contaminate it. Carry has a lantern and some grease and hot water, so
you can clean yourself there and put on your overcoat. Never let us
hear of you on a platform spouting about moral bills again unless you
say it is on account of the practical experience you've had of the
need of them to save weak and foolish young women from the clutches of
such as you."

Mr Pornsch arose with difficulty while Dawn struck matches to see what
he was like, and a more deplorably ludicrous spectacle never could be
seen in a pantomime. The only pity of it was that it was not a
punishment more frequently meted out to the sinners of his degree. He
raved and stuttered how he would move in the matter, but Dawn, who had
a commendable fearlessness in carrying out her undertakings, onl