and give me no more bother! It's
a criminal offence, I tell you; and these gentlemen are witnesses that
you tried it on. I'll have you put in the _tronk_. I'll--"

"Stow all that, Anstey," said one of the men, sternly and decisively.
"D'you mean to deny that this youngster ever handed you twenty-five
pounds? Come, now. Speak up, man!"

"Why of course I do," unhesitatingly replied Anstey, though not without
quailing before the indignation and contempt depicted on all three
faces.

"Well, then, I for one believe you are telling the most infernal lie
ever laid tongue to," said the transport-rider. "As for you,
youngster," turning to Gerard, "I can only say I'm sorry for you, for
you have fallen into the hands of the biggest blackguard in the whole of
this Colony. Why on earth didn't you make him give you a receipt or
something?"

"The fact is, he is related to me. I thought I could trust him. How
should I know he was no better than a common thief?"

"You're a mighty virtuous lot, eh, Sam Carruthers?" sneered Anstey.
"I've heard of a few tricks being played with waybills before to-day,
while the load's on the road."

"You just shut up, or I'll about knock your head off, Anstey, and be
glad of an opportunity to do it, too!" said another of the
transport-riders.

"Will you?" yelled Anstey, moving towards the inner door to ensure a
retreat in the event of any of them making an attempt at climbing over
the counter which now separated them from him. "I tell you what it is.
You're all in league with this swindling young thief, who is trying to
bluff me out of money. But it won't do--it won't do. He can take his
things and go to the devil. He came to me a beggar, and he can go out a
beggar--the ungrateful dog. And, if any one likes to try the smashing
trick, I've got a barker here that knows how to bite."

And, making a rapid skip inside, he reappeared in a moment with a
long-barrelled revolver.

All the anger, the indignation, almost the grief at being robbed, left
penniless, had momentarily faded from Gerard's mind before the
overwhelming disgust which he felt for the other's villainy. It was too
painful, too nauseating. That a man of Anstey's birth and antecedents,
a relative, though a distant one, of his own, could stoop to such a
black, pitiful, crawling theft, was revolting beyond words. He now
looked upon him with a kind of horror, as upon some loathly and hardly
human monster.

"It is just a