nced him charming. The next day, however,
he dropped in clad in the double-breasted blue jacket, the high boots
and green-veiled cabbage-tree he wore when on duty; and thereupon
Zara's opinion of him sank to null, and was not to be raised even by
him presenting himself in full dress: white-braided trousers, red faced
shell jacket, pill-box cap, cartouche box and cavalry sword. "La,
Polly! Nothing but a common policeman!" In vain did Polly explain the
difference between a member of the ordinary force and a mounted trooper
of the gold-escort; in vain lay stress on Richard's pleasure at seeing
Purdy buckle to steady work, no matter what. Zara's thoughts had taken
wing for a land where such anomalies were not; where you were not asked
to drink tea with the well-meaning constable who led you across a
crowded thoroughfare or turned on his bull's eye for you in a fog,
preparatory to calling up a hackney-cab.

But the chilly condescension with which, from now on, Zara treated him
did not seem to trouble Purdy. When he ran in for five minutes of a
morning, he eschewed the front entrance and took up his perch on the
kitchen-table. From here, while Polly cooked and he nibbled half-baked
pastry, the two of them followed the progress of events in the parlour.

Zara's arrival on Ballarat had been the cue for Hempel's reappearance,
and now hardly a day went by on which the lay-helper did not neglect
his chapel work, in order to pay what Zara called his "DEVOIRS." Slight
were his pretexts for coming: a rare bit of dried seaweed for bookmark;
a religious journal with a turned-down page; a nosegay. And though Zara
would not nowadays go the length of walking out with a dissenter--she
preferred on her airings to occupy the box-seat of Mr. Urquhart's
four-in-hand--she had no objection to Hempel keeping her company during
the empty hours of the forenoon when Polly was lost in domestic cares.
She accepted his offerings, mimicked his faulty speech, and was
continually hauling him up the precipice of self-distrust, only to let
him slip back as soon as he reached the top.

One day Purdy entered the kitchen doubled up with laughter. In passing
the front of the house he had thrown a look in at the parlour-window;
and the sight of the prim and proper Hempel on his knees on the woolly
hearthrug so tickled his sense of humour that, having spluttered out
the news, back he went to the passage, where he crouched down before
the parlour-door and glued