AustLit

An English jockey's dream of foul play in a cross-country race in Ireland prevents the shooting of his employer's horse at the waterjump - and thus saves him from losing his heavy wages. Race course plot ... Competent. (Nb: in these tales jockeys and owners seem of equal status; different to other tales of unequal social position.) (PB)

Familiar tale pleasantly executed. Two English cousins left a house and fortune on the condition that they marry, meet and fall in love without knowing the other's identity; he is disguised as a doctor, she as a housemaid in a small country village. (PB)

English tale of a colonel who dies intestate, his property thus descending to a nephew he had not liked and frequently said he would disinherit. A legal clerk obtains £1000 from the nephew when he offers to destroy a will leaving the property elsewhere - too late the nephew discovers that his uncle had revoked the will before he died. Plain tale of a plot well-laid. (PB)

Australian 'pragmatic' romance. A telegraph operator saves a local squire's daughter from drowning after falling from her horse in escaping Aborigines at her father's homestead - and the inevitable follows. Practical informal narrative voice. (PB)

Romance, misunderstanding and reunion set in England. The engagement of a rising young lawyer to the daughter of a man ambitious for a titled connection is broken through jealousy and the father's interference. A letter found six months later repairs the breech and enables the father to prove a very profitable land deal he thought he would miss out on ... Contrived; competently written. (PB)

Romance in a harbour town in Tasmania. A Launceston visitor helps bind the wound of a bushman only to discover later that he is a schoolteacher ... They marry. Light pleasant tale. (PB)

An English merchant pays an actress a large sum to leave the country and not marry his son. Too late he discovers that his son has no relation to her at all; that in fact he has married the girl his father refused to let him marry earlier. The actress story is a swindle arranged by his son's friend ... Tight slight little tale. (PB)

A London bachelor in love with a painting by an Italian artist, and the damage is irrevocable when he meets the original at his aunt's country house. Some early misunderstanding as the lady denies she has ever had her portrait painted. (PB)

A kindly and successful gentleman and gold miner calls in at a poor hut on his way home for his daughter's wedding. He shows the occupants his gold and promises to return and show the master of the house a good spot for digging. He is murdered for his kindness and the returned banished son is nearly tried for the crime through the possession of gold of his own - but it is his father's deed he is protecting. Interesting mix of kindness and domesticity with horror and violence. (PB)

Ghost saves officer. An army captain posted in the south of England assists a Scots private to buy his brother out of the service and return to support their aged mother. He knows he has made a firm friend and one night returning from leave the captain is saved from death on a bridge by the private as sentry. Only when he returns does he discover the man died the night before ... Firm tale of the services and the supernatural. (PB)

Description of a bloody charge at Gettysburg in the US Civil War. (PB)

An old man bereft of his daughter by her suicide and his son by his desertion to sea, is about to be robbed of his home also by an unknown mortgage. A stranger enters his house in a storm and stays the night. Randolph is tempted to murder him for the large sum of money he carries - but a Bible saves him - morning reveals that it is his son returned, having solved the problem of the mortgage. (PB)