Summary
Summary of The Moving Finger
The Moving Finger at a glance
Summary: 8 min to read
- Reading time
- About 3 h 45 min2 h 55 min fast, 4 h 25 min slow
- Length
- 53,200 words
- Library level
- Easy short sentences, plain words
- First published
- 1895by Mary Gaunt
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
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Key ideas
Key idea 1
Choices leave a lasting mark
A coach rolls through darkness over flooded plains. Its driver swears at the road and the horses while telling a ghost story about a girl, a cattle thief and cards that foretell death. This spoken tale opens a collection in which choices carry lasting consequences.
Mary Gaunt’s seven stories move across the colonial bush, from plains and gold camps to desert and stormy coast. The title’s image of a hand that writes and moves on gives them a shared concern: someone acts, and that act cannot be called back.
Key idea 2
Nellie mistakes possessiveness for love
At lonely Murwidgee Waterhole, Nellie loves Gentleman Jim, an escaped convict and bushranger whose educated speech sets him apart.
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Key idea 3
Danger reveals what Bessie feels
Bessie Warner refuses Tom Hollis again on the evening before Christmas.
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Key idea 4
Water sets the limits of hope
Beyond the Mulligan River, Anderson and Charles Helm follow tracks they hope belong to another party.
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Key idea 5
Susy puts faith before love
Susy Mackie loves Ben Harper, a sailor who is honest and well read but does not share her faith.
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Key idea 6
Kitty needs more than easy kindness
In drought-stricken Western Australia, Dick Stanesby tells Guy Turner that an inheritance has changed his prospects.
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Key idea 7
Hope becomes the stake in a wager
An older Hope tells her niece why she never married, returning to a secret engagement with Paul Griffith, a poor overseer.
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Key idea 8
Friends make Christmas from almost nothing
At Tinpot Gully, a young digger remembers his first Christmas away from home.
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Key idea 9
Small acts carry lasting consequences
Across these seven tales, people remain vivid through the acts that reveal them: loving a bushranger, riding for help, losing their tracks, remembering a race or making a pudding in a shirt.
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Who it’s for
You will enjoy this if you like short stories with a vivid sense of place, tales of the bush and the goldfields, and a plain, warm storyteller's voice.
What this book is
Picture a coach rolling through the dark over flooded plains, with a driver who swears at the road, the horses and the foolishness of women while he tells a ghost story. That is how The Moving Finger begins. Soon you are inside the tale of a girl at a lonely waterhole, the cattle thief she loves, and a card game that foretells death.
Mary Gaunt, an Australian-born writer, gathered seven stories of the colonial bush, from the plains to a gold camp, a desert, a stormy coast and a sheep station. The title comes from a verse about a hand that writes and moves on, and in each story someone makes a choice that cannot be called back.
In this summary
- 1Choices leave a lasting markFree
- 2Nellie mistakes possessiveness for love
- 3Danger reveals what Bessie feels
- 4Water sets the limits of hope
- 5Susy puts faith before love
- 6Kitty needs more than easy kindness
- 7Hope becomes the stake in a wager
- 8Friends make Christmas from almost nothing
- 9Small acts carry lasting consequences
A girl at a waterhole loves the wrong man
The first tale comes from a coach driver on the stock route between Hay and Deniliquin. Murwidgee Waterhole lies in a deep crack in a grey, shadeless plain. Old Durham and his wife sell liquor there without a licence, and their grandsons steal a few cattle from every herd that passes.
Their granddaughter Nellie is pretty, gentle and a little simple. She loves Gentleman Jim, an escaped convict and bushranger who speaks like an educated man. Her grandmother reads death in the cards. When Jim learns that Ben Fisher, a foreman, wants to marry Nellie, he swears to kill her if she goes near the man. Nellie kisses his hand, because his anger looks to her like love.
The family has an old trick. A rider in a white sheet gallops through a sleeping camp, the cattle stampede, and some of them vanish. This time Fisher's men know the trick, and one promises a bullet for the ghost. Warning Fisher would betray Jim. Blind loyalty to one man sets the whole night moving.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
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Check yourself
Why does Nellie accept Jim’s threatening behaviour?
Right. “Nellie kisses his hand, because his anger looks to her like love.”Not quite. “Nellie kisses his hand, because his anger looks to her like love.”
What forces Helm to recognise that the men are lost?
Right. “Anderson understands first, and Helm will not believe it until he stands again at the same salt pan.”Not quite. “Anderson understands first, and Helm will not believe it until he stands again at the same salt pan.”
What shared idea links the stories?
Right. “In each one, a single act cannot be taken back.”Not quite. “In each one, a single act cannot be taken back.”
Go deeper: the whole of The Moving Finger
About 3 h 50 min to read.Start freePaperback, hardcover and large print, printed for you at cost, are on their way.Email me when it is printed
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 53,200 words
- Reading timeAbout 3 h 45 min
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary
- LanguagesEnglish and 10 other languages
Questions about The Moving Finger
What is The Moving Finger about?
It is a collection of seven stories set in the Australian bush in colonial times. They cover a bushranger's sweetheart, a hostage rescue at Christmas, lost explorers, a wreck on a stormy coast, a hutkeeper on a lonely plain, a steeplechase and a digger's Christmas.
What does the title The Moving Finger mean?
The title comes from the verse printed at the start, which says that a moving finger writes and then moves on, and that no piety, wit or tears can cancel what it has written. Each story turns on an act that cannot be undone.
Who wrote The Moving Finger and when is it set?
Mary Gaunt, an Australian writer who died in 1942, wrote the stories. They are fiction set in the colonial period, from the days of the goldfields in the 1850s onward, on stations, diggings, plains and the southern coast.
Is The Moving Finger easy to follow?
The stories are short and each one stands alone. Several are told by a lively speaker, such as a coach driver or an old aunt, and the plain dialogue and clear scenes make them easy to follow by ear.
What is the main message of The Moving Finger?
The collection shows that one act, word or wager can shape a whole life, and that nothing can wash it out afterward. It also shows how loneliness, pride and love steer people on the frontier.
Cite this edition
Gaunt, Mary. The Moving Finger. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-moving-finger.
Gaunt, M. (2026). The moving finger. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-moving-finger (Original work published 1895)
Gaunt, Mary. The Moving Finger. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-moving-finger.
@book{gaunt2026moving,
author = {Gaunt, Mary},
title = {The Moving Finger},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-moving-finger},
note = {First published 1895}
}
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Get the full summary of The Moving Finger, free
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