rd, at the lawyer's door. The long day and
longer night he spent in the Domain, now on a bench, now on the grass
under a Norfolk Island pine, the companion of perhaps the lowest class
on earth, the Larrikins of Sydney. Morning after morning, the dawn behind
the lighthouse recalled him from slumber; and he would stand and gaze
upon the changing east, the fading lenses, the smokeless city, and the
many-armed and many-masted harbour growing slowly clear under his eyes.
His bed-fellows (so to call them) were less active; they lay sprawled
upon the grass and benches, the dingy men, the frowsy women, prolonging
their late repose; and Carthew wandered among the sleeping bodies alone,
and cursed the incurable stupidity of his behaviour. Day brought a new
society of nurserymaids 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 black-guards"--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 f