"I suppose he's not a bad man now," cried Ned, boiling over. "He's not on the make like most of them and he fancies he's very patriotic, I imagine, but what does he know of us or of the squatter? He sees us at our worst and the squatter at his best and we've got different ways of talking and when we get drunk on poisoned rum that the Government lets be sold we aren't as gentlemanly as those who get drunk on Hennessy and champagne. We don't curse in the same gentlemanly way and we splash out what we think and don't wear two faces like his set. And so he thinks we're ruffians and outlaws and he can't feel why the bushmen care for the unions. The squatter has taken up all the land and the squatter law has tied up what hasn't been taken and most of us are a lot of outcasts, without homes or wives or children or anything that a man should have barring our horses. We've got no votes and every law is set against us and we've no rights and the squatter'd like to throw us all out to make room for Chinese. There's nothing in front of the bushman now unless the union gets it for him and they're trying to break up our union, Griffith and his push, and, by God, they shan't do it. They haven't gaols enough to hold every good unionist, not if they hang a thousand of us to start with." "What does it matter, after all, Ned?" said Nellie, gently. "The Cause itself gains by everything that makes men think. There'll never be peace until the squatter goes altogether and the banks and the whole system. And the squatter can't help it. I abuse him myself but I know he only does what most of our own class in his place would do." "Of course he can't help it, Nellie," agreed Ned. "They're mostly mortgaged up to the neck like the shopkeepers and squeeze us partly to keep afloat themselves. It's the system, not the squatters personally. A lot of them are decent enough, taking them off their runs and some are decent even on their runs. Even the squatters aren't all bad. I don't wish them any harm individually but just the same we're fighting them and they're fighting us and what I feel sorest about is that it's just because the New Unionism is teaching our chaps to think and to be better and to have ideas that they are trying so hard to down it." "They don't know any better," repeated Nellie. "That's what Geisner says, I recollect. I mind how he said they'd try sending us to prison here in Australia. They're beginning soon." They were right at the point now. "There's only one thing I'd like to know first, Nellie." "What is it, Ned?" she asked, unconsciously, absorbed in her fear for him. CHAPTER III. A WOMAN'S WHIM. "Nellie!" It was a husky whisper. His throat was parched, his lips dry, his mouth also. His heart thumped, thumped, thumped, so that it sickened him. He shook nervously. His face twitched. He felt burning hot; then deadly cold. He turned his hat slowly round and round in his trembling fingers.