Archie Cross stood up; he rolled his hat in his hands. His face, hacked out of a piece of dull flesh, sun-reddened, moved convulsively; his hair was roughed-up from it; his small, sombre eyes went with straight lightnings to the men in the hall about him.
"It's true—what George says," he said after a pause, as if it were difficult for him to express his thought. "I haven't been seein' eye to eye with Michael lately ... and I listened to all the dirty gossip that mob"—he glanced towards M'Ginnis and the men with him—"put round about him. It was part that ... and part listening to their talk about money invested here making all the difference to Fallen Star ... and the children growing up ... and gettin' scared and worried about seein' them through ... made me go agin you boys lately, and let that lot get hold of me.... But this business about Michael's shown me where I am. Michael's stood for one thing all through—the Ridge and the hanging on to the mines for us.... He's been a better Ridge man than I have.... And I want to say ... as far as I'm concerned, Michael's proved himself.... I don't reck'n hanging on to opals was anything ... no more does Ted. It's the sort of thing a chap like Michael'd do absent-minded ... not noticin' what he was doin'; but when he did notice—and got scared thinkin' where he was gettin' to, and what it might look like, he couldn't get rid of 'em quick, enough. That's what I think, and that's what Ted thinks, too. He hasn't got the gift of the gab, Ted, or he'd say so himself.... If there's goin' to be opposition to Michael, it's not comin' from us.... And we've made up our minds we stand by the Ridge."
"Good old Archie!" somebody shouted.
"What have you got to say, Roy?" George Woods faced his secretary who had been scratching diligently throughout the meeting. "You've been more with the M'Ginnis lot, too, than with us, lately."
Roy flushed and sprang to his feet.
"I'm in the same boat with Archie and Ted," he said. "Except about the family ... mine isn't so big yet as it might be. But it's a fact, I funked, not having had much luck lately.... But if ever I go back on the Ridge again ... may the lot of you go back on me."
Exclamations of approbation and goodwill reverberated as Roy subsided into his chair again.
"That's all there is to be said on the subject, I think," George Woods remarked.
"Michael wanted his mates to know what he had done—and why he had done it. He's asked for judgment from his mates.... If he'd wanted to go back on us he could have done it; he could have done it quite easy. Armitage would have shut up on his suspicions about the stones. Charley could have been bought. Michael need never 've faced all this as far as I can see ... but he decided to face it rather than give up all we've been fightin' for here. He'd rather take all the dirt we care to sling at him than anything they could give him ... and that's why M'Ginnis has been up against him like he has. Michael has queered his pitch, and most of us have a notion that M'Ginnis has been here to do Armitage's work ... work up discontent and ill-feeling amongst us, and split our ranks; and he came very near doing it. If Michael hadn't 've stood by us, like he's always done, we'd have the Armitage Syndicate on our backs by now."
"To tell you the truth, boys," George went on, after a moment's hesitation, and then as if the impulse to speak a secret thought were too strong for him, "I've always thought Michael was too good. And if those stones did get hold of him for a couple of weeks, like he says, all it proves, as far as I can see, is that Michael isn't any plaster saint, but a man like the rest of us."