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“Kick the skunk out of town, or boycott him!” said one or two. “He ought to be tarred and feathered and hanged.”

“Couldn’t do worse than hang him,” commented Jake Boreham, cheerfully.

“Oh, yes, we could,” said Mitchell, sitting down, resting his elbows on his knees, and marking his points with one forefinger on the other. “For instance, we might boil him slow in tar. We might skin him alive. We might put him in a cage and poke him with sticks, with his wife and children in another cage to look on and enjoy the fun.”

The chaps, who had been sitting quietly listening to Mitchell, and grinning, suddenly became serious and shifted their positions uneasily.

“But I can tell you what would hurt his feelings more than anything else we could do,” said Mitchell.

“Well, what is it, Jack?” said Tom Hall, rather impatiently.

“Send round the hat and take up a collection for him,” said Mitchell, “enough to let him get away with his wife and children and start life again in some less respectable town than Bourke. You needn’t grin, I’m serious about it.”

There was a thoughtful pause, and one or two scratched their heads. “His wife seems pretty sick,” Mitchell went on in a reflective tone. “I passed the place this morning and saw him scrubbing out the floor. He’s been doing a bit of house-painting for old Heegard to-day. I suppose he learnt it in jail. I saw him at work and touched my hat to him.”

“What!” cried Tom Hall, affecting to shrink from Mitchell in horror.

“Yes,” said Mitchell, “I’m not sure that I didn’t take my hat off. Now I know it’s not bush religion for a man to touch his hat, except to a funeral, or a strange roof or woman sometimes; but when I meet a braver man than myself I salute him. I’ve only met two in my life.”

“And who were they, Jack?” asked Jake Boreham.

“One,” said Mitchell–“one is Douglas, and the other–well, the other was the man I used to be. But that’s got nothing to do with it.”

“But perhaps Douglas thought you were crowing over him when you took off your hat to him–sneerin’ at him, like, Mitchell,” reflected Jake Boreham.

“No, Jake,” said Mitchell, growing serious suddenly. “There are ways of doing things that another man understands.”

They all thought for a while.

“Well,” said Tom Hall, “supposing we do take up a collection for him, he’d be too damned proud to take it.”

“But that’s where we’ve got the pull on him,” said Mitchell, brightening up. “I heard Dr Morgan say that Mrs Douglas wouldn’t live if she wasn’t sent away to a cooler place, and Douglas knows it; and, besides, one of the little girls is sick. We’ve got him in a corner and he’ll have to take the stuff. Besides, two years in jail takes a lot of the pride out of a man.”

“Well, I’m damned if I’ll give a sprat to help the man who tried his best to crush the Unions!” said One-eyed Bogan.

“Damned if I will either!” said Barcoo-Rot.

“Now, look here, One-eyed Bogan,” said Mitchell, “I don’t like to harp on old things, for I know they bore you, but when you returned to public life that time no one talked of kicking you out of the town. In fact, I heard that the chaps put a few pounds together to help you get away for a while till you got over your modesty.”

No one spoke.

“I passed Douglas’s place on my way here from my camp to-night,” Mitchell went on musingly, “and I saw him walking up and down in the yard with his sick child in his arms. You remember that little girl, Bogan? I saw her run and pick up your hat and give it to you one day when you were trying to put it on with your feet. You remember, Bogan? The shock nearly sobered you.”