'All right, Boss. You'll find it will take some tall calculatin' though. Them Unionists are getting too strong for the police to tackle. Windeatt up at Breeza Downs is in a mortal funk, and sending word everywhere for a squad of Specials to protect his woolshed.'
'It seems,' said Lady Biddy to her husband, when the mailman had gone, 'that there might be some use after all for Luke Tallant's Maxims.'
'It seems that Jim Steadbolt has been taking his revenge,' he answered, 'and that I must be in the saddle in an hour's time. Mix me a drink, Biddy, and order in some grub, while I go and have a bath.'
He looked as if he needed one. The dust of the drafting camp was caked upon his face and clothes. His was the appearance of a man who had been riding hard after stock and sleeping, between his blankets only, under the stars.
Lady Bridget mixed him his drink and went to see Chen Sing in the kitchen. When she came back, Colin was in the front veranda. He had tumbled the rest of the letters and papers out of the mail-bag, and was hastily and eagerly scanning the last LEICHARDT'S TOWN CHRONICLE.
'Any news, Colin?'
'I don't know, I was looking to see if the Government were going to act against the strikers—I see they are sending troops.'
'And is Luke Tallant coming at the head of them, in official uniform, to read the Riot Act?—if there is a Riot Act in Australia. I'd like to see Luke maintaining the supremacy of the British Crown on the Leura.'
He looked up at her in vague rebuke of her levity, and there was suppressed tenderness in his eyes, notwithstanding his preoccupation with his own troubles.
'No, no. But there's something in the paper about Lady Tallant being ill and having an operation. Poor chap! He wouldn't have been bothering much about strikes in the Never-Never and the supremacy of the British Crown, any more than I should in similar circumstances.... Well, there! I must go and bogey*.'