Cirrus@Austlit

Horse-racing and gambling tale, involves a trainer's tip received by a sporting journalist apparently via telegram for an outsider in the Derby. Telepathy is the true source. Reaction of editor and fellow journalists included. (PB)

Adventure told to men's club acquaintances. Tale of a German who travelled to the US and worked at Auburn prison, New York, as prison doctor. Two viscious escapees take him prisoner and tie him to a railway track to await his death - revenge for his discovery of earlier escape attempts. His terrible ordeal - including a train rushing over him and a subsequent fever turn his hair grey. (PB)

A wife's news of her mother's visit prompts her to tell her husband a few truths about what he owes to his mother-in-law's kindness. (PB)

Horse breeder and trainer Joe Turner helps save well-bred Woodsman John Blackburn - and comforts his beautiful daughter Mary. They have a hermit-like existence. Another visit by Turner, his son and a friend introduce Mary Blackburn to her suitor and Melbourne for the Cup. A dream gives her dying father the colours of the Cup winner and he mortgages everything to raise the money to back it. The horse wins and with Turner's help Blackburn learns of his win by telegraph just before he dies of a heart attack in his bush hut. Contrast of the quiet world of Blackburn's bush hut to Melbourne and the Cup crowd. (PB)

Reminiscence by Foreign Office man to fellow men's club members of a courier trip to Austria in 1878 with an important despatch. Attempts by a pretty French girl and a Yorkshire cloth merchant to steal his despatch for their Russian employers fail - but only just. (PB)

A maiden's idyllic cave retreat in the Australian bush is penetrated by a man. She binds his wounds and serves him tea - innocently falling in love with the hunted bushranger Darrell. He is captured and killed in the cave - and she dies when she discovers their retreat destroyed ... Sentimental. (PB)

A shepherd's quick intelligence saves his wife and new-born son from Spanish troops invading their abandoned town - and wins a gold chain and purse to boot. Set in the 'Palatinate' during the Thirty Years War. (PB)

Romantic tragedy. A couple are separated when Frank Thurgood goes to Australia to earn a living to marry Mary Hilford. Four years later, a station overseer, he sends for her but she is killed in a bushfire. Twelve years later a surly cook arrives and a ghost is seen at Frank's grave. It is Mary dressed as a man, come to tend her fiancee's grave. The manager discovers her secret - revealing it only when she is found dead on Frank's grave. Good depictions of the bush. Cross-dressing theme is interesting. (PB)

Colt Price is recalled to Van Diemen's Land and the break-up of the prison mooted. This prompts 'The Forty' who had vowed to kill Price to renew their attempts. Gunshots, strychnine, hut-keeper's plots; betrayal and murder precede the hanging of the ringleader. Seven years later in Victoria at Point Gellibrand where many of the original Norfolk Island convicts were breaking stones - again under Price's command - he was finally battered to death and a near uprising of the convicts quickly put down - hangings followed, etc. Reaction of Victorians to the influx of Norfolk Island convicts interesting. (PB)

Anecdote of a meeting between Queen Victoria and an unsophisticated Scottish dog breeder who had given her two collies. (PB)