Cirrus@Austlit

Story of male enmity and friendship. A judge meets an ex-Civil War soldier in the witness stand and discovers the friend of his youth who he had believed dead and whose sweetheart dies when he discovers she had only ever loved him - and male friendship is restored. (PB)

A young lady driven into service as a housemaid by poverty and her poor abilities as a seamstress meets two former suitors at dinner. The true man, with one arm lost in the war, follows her to the kitchen and proposes - and only then does she tell him of the inheritance received that day. References made to the play "She Stoops to Conquer"; and corsets and health. (PB)

A retired general refuses to let his daughter marry an honourable newspaper editor on the basis of her elder sister's unhappy marriage and death. He relents so far as to let the editor live in the house for a two year trial and is won over finally when the editor knocks out a burglar. His consent is given too late however - the couple had been married secretly some time before ... (PB)

Set amid England's cotton-spinning mills. The youngest son of a prosperous mill owner, far brighter than his yeoman family, finds his place and work as a lawyer - away from the mills. He earns not only his lawyer's wig but the quire's daughter by his valiant study and pleading. The squire's inherited title and honour meets the mill owner's loyalty and money. (PB)

Crime tale on the gold fields in the Great Dividing Range. Narrator's brother is robbed and left for dead after riding accident on the way to a new rush. His guide, a heartless debt collector, covers up the death but the narrator discovers his crimes by spying on him and his son. The explosion of a log loaded with explosives exposes Chaser's ill-gotten plunder, and wounds him mortally. He confesses before he dies and the narrator's brother returns from the supposed dead after adventures of his own. (PB)

Prison tale. A big man imprisoned for manslaughter in the defence of a woman being beaten by her husband carries his increasing resentment until one day he seizes a small child visiting the workshop to have his revenge. Her gentleness to him saves her life and frees his heart. Good tension sustained - he works with a huge hammer, guards, fellow prisoners and child's parents all immobilised while he contemplates revenge. (PB)

Beautiful girl bought a bicycle by her parents increasingly goes riding with the local doctor. Jealous neighbour and pretended friend sabotages her bike one day but the resulting accident only prompts a proposal earlier than otherwise intended. Light romance, female rivlary, freedom from convention made possible by the bikes. (PB)

A beauty on the eve of returning to England sees through a field-glass her fiancee greeting a beautiful actress at the races and breaks their engagement when she discovers the actress' photo in his wallet. Three years later at a garden party in England she learns that the actress was the wife of a friend and he was acting as a messenger. Misunderstanding resolved. (PB)

Satirical account of the theft of a Victorian country landlord's safe from his room with 1000 pounds in gold. First it seems a scheme concocted with his middle-aged housekeeper to fool his creditors, marry her and start a new business. She is found only to have 100 pounds and his Irish cook to have gained the money and his promise to marry her for it. But she is in love with the local blacksmith and plans to run away with him - but his honesty gives it to the local mounted trooper. Sub-plot of the housekeeper's arrest for bigamy by Melbourne detective Blunt ... (PB)

Satirical club piece on the woes of Rubens Gobbles, RA - painter of plump nobility, in London. Happy marriage is his until his beautiful wife and model turns vegetarian ... The tale interrupts the narrator's digestion - especially when he learns it is a joke. (PB)

Farcical reminiscence of the narrator's 1886 visit to the Melbourne suburb of his childhood and his efforts to locate an old friend. The whole place has changed, he continually confuses addresses and people. All is explained when he awakens from a dream on the bus. (PB)