for this God-forsaken country. Apart from his duties he kept mostly to
himself, though when not travelling he always went down to O'Fallen's
Hotel once a day for a glass of whisky and water--whisky kept especially
for him; and as he drank this slowly he talked to Victoria Lindley the
barmaid, or to any chance visitors whom he knew. He never drank with any
one, nor asked any one to drink; and, strange to say, no one resented
this. As Vic said: "He was different." Dicky Merritt, the solicitor,
who was hail-fellow with squatter, homestead lessee, cockatoo-farmer, and
shearer, called him "a lively old buffer." It was he, indeed, who gave
him the name of Old Roses. Dicky sometimes went over to Long Neck
Billabong, where Old Roses lived, for a reel, as he put it, and he always
carried away a deep impression of the Inspector's qualities.

"Had his day," said Dicky in O'Fallen's sitting-room one night, "in
marble halls, or I'm a Jack. Run neck and neck with almighty swells
once. Might live here for a thousand years and he'd still be the
nonesuch of the back-blocks. I'd patent him--file my caveat for him
to-morrow, if I could, bully Old Roses!"

Victoria Lindley, the barmaid, lifted her chin slightly from her hands,
as she leaned through the opening between the bar and the sitting-room,
and said: "Mr. Merritt, Old Roses is a gentleman; and a gentleman is a
gentleman till he--"

"Till he humps his bluey into the Never Never Land, Vic? But what do you
know about gentlemen, anyway? You were born only five miles from the
jumping-off place, my dear."

"Oh," was the quiet reply, "a woman--the commonest woman--knows a
gentleman by instinct. It isn't what they do, it's what they don't do;