The Shearer's Colt

"The Shearer's Colt" is a horseracing novel. It tells the tale of upper-class Londoner Hilton Fitzroy who is attempting to establish himself in Queensland, a frontier state. He gets hired as Red Fred's «seckitary,» a shearer who struck it rich in the gold mines and now needs help spending his millions. Hilton Fitzroy is described as someone with a « violent temper and his stubborn refusal to bear himself lowly and reverently towards anybody, all marked him out as a throw-back to some (possibly royal) ancestor who had helped himself to everything in sight in the dim and distant past.» Will Fitzroy squander the shearer's money on gambling or invest it?