It was nearly midnight when the “entertainment” concluded, and it was Sunday morning before all the entertained got into the open air again. As the reeking crowd struggled out, the mulatto recommenced his plunging manœuvres. When the boys got out, they saw him hurrying in the moonlight down an alley between two little rows of tents.
“He’s a nice young man for a small music party,” said Harry, looking after him; “and there seems to be plenty of his sort. Come along, Donald; we’ve a good step to go, and I should feel so spoony if I got bailed up by those fellows; though it isn’t much, is it, they could ease us of?”
Mr. Lawson had pitched his tent on the other side of the “township,” some little way down the Jerry’s Town road, in a place where there were no other tents near.
When the boys had crossed the flat, and were ascending the steep rough bush track dignified with the name of Jerry’s Town Road, they were not exactly pleased to see a man who looked very much like the mulatto, and two other men, slip out of the bush, and seat themselves on a log and a stump by the roadside.
“It don’t seem game to turn out of the road for those fellows, does it, Donald?” said Harry. “But I’ll go bail they’re up to no good, and they’re hulking big beggars, and I’ll be bound they’ve barkers, and we haven’t.”
“I dinna think they’re planting for us,” answered Donald; “but, as like as not, they’d gie us a knock on the head if we went up to them; an’ what’s the use o’ gettin’ a knock on the head for nae guid, if ye can avoid it?”
“I should uncommonly like to know what they’re scheming,” said Harry, as the boys turned aside into the bush. “They’re jabbering fast enough about something. Let’s creep up behind and listen. P’r’aps it’s the governor they’ve a down on.”
This is what the boys heard when they had crept like cats to a listening-place:
“It’s a squatter fellow that sold some bullocks to Wilcox the butcher,” said one of the mulatto’s companions. “He’s camped out yonder by himself.”
“Well, but,” objected the mulatto, “Wilcox would pay him in orders, and what’s the good of them?”