n change both of tone
and humor; "that's what I'm here to tell you, if you really want to
know! Rum thing, wasn't it? One night I turn up, like any other swaggy,
humping bluey, and next week I'm overseer on a good screw (I will say
that) and my own boss out at the out-station. Same way, one morning I
turn up at his grand homestead here--and you know what! It was a check
for three figures. I don't mind telling you. It ought to have been four.
But why do you suppose he made it even three? Not for charity, you bet
your boots! I leave it to you to guess what for."

The riddle was perhaps more easily solvable by an inveterate novelist
than by the average member of the community. It was of a kind which
Langholm had been concocting for many years.

"I suppose there is some secret," said he, taking a fresh grip of his
stick, in sudden loathing of the living type which he had only imagined
hitherto.

"Ah! You've hit it," purred the wretch.

"It is evident enough, and always has been, for that matter," said
Langholm, coldly. "And so you know what his secret is!"

"I do, mister."

"And did Mr. Minchin?"

"He did."

"You would tell him, of course?"

The sort of scorn was too delicate for John William Abel, yet even he
seemed to realize that an admission must be accompanied by some form of
excuse.

"I did tell him," he said, "for I felt I owed it to him. He was a good
friend to me, was Mr. Minchin; and neither of us was getting enough for
all we did. That was what I felt; to have his own way, the boss'd ride
roughshod over us both, and he himself only--but that's tellings again.
You must wait a bit, mister! Mr. Minchin hadn't to wait so very long,
because I thought we could make him listen to two of us, so one night I
told him what I knew. You could ha' knocked him down with a feather.
Nobody dreamt of it in New South Wales. No, there wasn't a hand on the
place who would have thought it o' the boss! Well, he was fond of
Minchin, treated him like a son, and perhaps he wasn't such a good son
as he might have been. But when he told the boss what I told him, and
made the suggestion that I thought would come best from a gent like
him--"

"That you should both be taken into partnership on the spot, I suppose?"
interrupted Langholm.

"Well, yes, it came to something like that."

"Go on, Abel. I won't interrupt again. What happened then?"

"Well, he'd got to go, had Mr. Minchin! The boss told him he could tell
who he lik