From that time onward my career was a strange one.  I became a veritable Jack-of-all-Trades.  A station-hand, a roust-about, shearer, assistant to a travelling hawker, a gold-miner, and at last a trooper in one of the finest bodies of men in the world, the Queensland Mounted Police.  It was in this curious fashion that I arrived at my real vocation.  After a considerable period spent at headquarters, I was drafted to a station in the Far West.  There was a good deal of horse and sheep-stealing going on in that particular locality, and a large amount of tact and ingenuity were necessary to discover the criminals.  I soon found that this was a business at which I was likely to be successful.  More than once I had the good fortune to be able to bring to book men who had carried on their trade for years, and who had been entirely unsuspected.  Eventually my reputation in this particular line of business became noised abroad, until it came to the ears of the Commissioner himself.  Then news reached us that a dastardly murder had been committed in the suburbs of Brisbane, and that the police were unable to obtain any clue as to the identity of the person accountable for it.  Two or three men were arrested on suspicion, but were immediately discharged on being in a position to give a satisfactory account of their actions on the night of the murder.  It struck me that I should like to take up the case, and with the confidence of youth, I applied to the Commissioner for permission to be allowed to try my hand at unravelling the mystery.  What they thought of my impudence I cannot say, but the fact remains that my request, after being backed up by my Inspector, was granted.  The case was a particularly complicated one, and at one time I was beginning to think that I should prove no more successful than the others had been.  Instead of deterring me, however, this only spurred me on to greater efforts.  The mere fact that I had asked to be allowed to take part in the affair, had aroused the jealousy of the detectives of the department, and I was aware that they would receive the news of my failure with unqualified satisfaction.  I therefore prosecuted my inquiries in every possible direction, sparing myself neither labour nor pains.  It would appear that the victim, an old man, was without kith or kin.  He was very poor, and lived by himself in a small villa on the outskirts of the city.  No one had been seen near the house on the night in question, nor had any noise been heard by the neighbours.  Yet in the morning he was discovered lying on the floor of the front-room, stabbed to the heart from behind.  Now every detective knows—­indeed it is part of his creed—­that, in an affair such as I am describing, nothing is too minute or too trivial to have a bearing upon the case.  The old gentleman had been at supper when the crime was committed, and from the fact that the table was only laid for one, I argued that he had not expected a visitor.  The murderer could not have been hungry,