ke the stuff. Besides, two years in jail takes a lot of the pride out
of a man."

"Well, I'm damned if I'll give a sprat to help the man who tried his
best to crush the Unions!" said One-eyed Bogan.

"Damned if I will either!" said Barcoo-Rot.

"Now, look here, One-eyed Bogan," said Mitchell, "I don't like to harp
on old things, for I know they bore you, but when you returned to public
life that time no one talked of kicking you out of the town. In fact, I
heard that the chaps put a few pounds together to help you get away for
a while till you got over your modesty."

No one spoke.

"I passed Douglas's place on my way here from my camp to-night,"
Mitchell went on musingly, "and I saw him walking up and down in the
yard with his sick child in his arms. You remember that little girl,
Bogan? I saw her run and pick up your hat and give it to you one day
when you were trying to put it on with your feet. You remember, Bogan?
The shock nearly sobered you."

There was a very awkward pause. The position had become too
psychological altogether and had to be ended somehow. The awkward
silence had to be broken, and Bogan broke it. He turned up Bob
Brothers's hat, which was lying on the table, and "chucked" in a "quid,"
qualifying the hat and the quid, and disguising his feelings with the
national oath of the land.

"We've had enough of this gory, maudlin, sentimental tommy-rot,"
he said. "Here, Barcoo, stump up or I'll belt it out of your hide!
I'll--I'll take yer to pieces!"

But Douglas didn't leave the town. He sent his wife and children to
Sydney until the heat wave was past, built a new room on to the cottage,
and started a book and newspaper shop, and a poultry farm in the back
paddock, and flourished.

They called him Mr Douglas for a while, then Douglas, then Percy
Douglas, and now he is well-known as Old Daddy Douglas, and the Sydney
_Worker_, _Truth_, and _Bulletin_, and other democratic rags are on sale
at his shop. He is big with schemes for locking the Darling River,
and he gets his drink at O'Donohoo's. He is scarcely yet regarded as a
straight-out democrat. He was a gentleman once, Mitchell said, and the
old blood was not to be trusted. But, last elections, Douglas worked
quietly for Unionism, and gave the leaders certain hints, and put them
up to various electioneering dodges which enabled them to return, in
the face of Monopoly, a Labour member who is as likely to go straight as
long as any other Labour