a symptom of brain-softening. But it happened to be neither; it was in
fact a means to a wicked end. On the fading end of a superior suburb,
where the streets of fine villas and mansions thinned off and dwindled,
and were lost among the gum trees of the original wilderness, Nickie
found his billet.

The suburb was coming ahead. The motor-car had made it easy and
accessible to the rich. Splendid dwellings were going up all over the
place, the road makers were exceedingly busy, and hammers of the
stone-knappers rattled an incessant fusillade.

Nickie the Kid came to Banklands one pleasant summer day, watched the
busy people with a desultory sort of interest, and moralised within
himself.

"Do these people expect to live a thousand years?" mused Mr. Crips, "that
they build such solid houses? Or do they regard them as monuments? Look
at that palace, and I sleep well on a potato sack under four boards!"

Nickie was examining a fine, white house, ornate as a wedding cake, with
plentiful cement, and balconies as frivolous as those of a Chinese
pagoda. It stood within capacious grounds, and proclaimed aloud the fact
that its proprietor was a rich man, ostentatious of his riches.

"I expect there's a matter of thirty rooms in that house," mused Nicholas
Crips, "and after all, a man can get just as drunk in a threepenny bar."

Nickie put in a couple of days skirmishing at Banklands, and fared well,
but as there was no hotel in the suburb Nicholas did not contemplate
making a lengthy stay. Something he saw on the second afternoon induced