“A good five mile,” quoth the unabashed Towney, “and quite enough too. I walked a bit, and smoked a bit, you see. Blest if I didn’t think I should finish my baccy before the blessed old sun went down.”
“Well, I’m full up of looking for work,” said the younger man. “There’s no improvements goin’ on in this slow place, or I could soon get in hut-buildin’, or dam-makin’, or diggin’ post holes. I ain’t like you, Towney, able to coast about without a job of work from shearin’ to shearin’. If the coves knowed you as well as I do they’d let you starve a bit, and try how you like that.”
An ugly look came into the eyes of the man as he said slowly, “There might be a shed burnt, accidental-like, if they tried that game. You remember Gondaree, Bill, and the flash super? I wonder how he and his boss looked that Sunday mornin’.”
Bill, an elderly, clean-shaved individual, the yellowness of whose physiognomy favoured the hypothesis of prison discipline having been applied (ineffectually) for his reformation, gave a chuckle of satisfaction as he replied—
“Well, it happened most unfortunate. I ’ope it didn’t ill-convenience ’em that shearin’. I hear as M‘Nab (he’s boss now, and they’ve bought the next run) has got the best travellers’ hut on the river. Anybody heard who they’ve shopped for those hawkers at Bandra?” continued Bill, who seemed to have got into a cheerful line of anecdote, running parallel with the Police Gazette.
“Why, what happened them?” asked the fiery-faced young man.
“Oh, not much,” affably returned Bill; “there wasn’t much of ’em found, only a heap of bones, about the size of shillings. Some chaps had rubbed ’em out and burned ’em.”
“What for?” inquired the sun-scorched proprietor of the prize freckles.
“Well, they was supposed to be good for a hundred or so. However, they put it away so artful that no one but the police was able to collar it; and the fellows got nothin’ but a trifle of slops and a fiver.”
“It’s my belief,” asserted the young man with the high colour, concluding the conversation, “that you and Towney are a pair of scoundrels as would cut the throat of your own father for a note. And for two pins I’d hammer the pair of ye, and kick yer out of the hut to sleep under a gum-tree. It’s dogs like you, too, as give working-men a bad name, and makes the squatters harder upon the lot of us than they would be. I’m goin’ to turn in.”