These shoes took him three times as long to clean as any previous pair. Having done them, he began to whistle, and continued whistling till he came to the last pair. These were a woman’s shoes, size six, collected from the bedroom door of Miss Eleanor Jade. Like the shoes from Number Five, they were also damp.

“Ha! Ha!”chortled Bisker.“The old bird! The old cat! The old-old-” Ceasing his chortling he began to brush the shoes collected from the bedroom door behind which slept Miss Eleanor Jade. “Now, lemme see. Number Five goes for a walk late last night. In he comes, has a drink or two-I must ask George about that-then toddles off to ’is room, takes off ’is shoes and plants ’emoutside his door for me to clean. Yes, that’s how it was. But that same argument can’t be applied to the old cat. She wouldn’t be outwalkin ’ late last night, and yet ’ershoes are wet same as Number Five’s. The old- Ah-yes, she could ’ave. A little bit of love, eh! Ho! Ho! Sherlock ’Olmesme!”

Having completed this task, Bisker placed the footwear on a large wooden tray and went back to the bedrooms. By the time he had replaced them where he had found them it was almost full daylight.

He left the house to return to his room, a hut built in a far corner of the spacious garden. On the way a magnificent panoramic view of valley and distant mountains was presented to his unappreciative eyes. From the wide, stone-balustradedveranda extending the full length of the house-front, a well-kept lawn tilted gently down to the distant wire fence bordering a main highway. The lawn, as well as the small shrubs in beds spaced upon it, was white with frost, a glittering white upon which lay the reflected light of the sun now rising above the far mountains, thirty-odd miles across the valley.

After shaving and washing in ice-cold water, Bisker returned to the kitchen where the aroma of cooking food and simmering coffee caused him to forget momentarily the agony of the first five minutes of his day following the ringing of the alarm clock. Outside, the air was milder. The bushman in Bisker was quick to note the remarkable rise in the temperature after the sun had risen.