mixed with the rattle of wheels. A handful of Purdey’s men were driving round the fifteen corners of the township with six beaten kerosene-tins and a couple of concertinas.
Murray moved in his chair uneasily, and shook out his pipe.
“I’ll have to go out and kick up a shine directly, you know,” he said. “Where d’you rake ’em up from, Purdey? They are quite the hardest filings I ever broke a knife over.”
Purdey sleeked his little fair moustache with slow fingers.
“A man’s not a man without a splash of the brute in him,” he said. “They are not pretty; but they’re tough. The bush won’t have weaklings. I bully-dam them from the jump, and if they play up they know it. But, bless you, if I kick them out they come back the next year with their tails down. It’s like to like, and no other job can hold them for long. When the bush calls they’ve got to answer, if it strips half their life off ’em.”
“I know. You see it in every caste. They must run with their own mob; for their ear-mark is struck, and the brand of the wild is on their shoulders. Now, by all the ——— there go the Salvation Army lassies. Three of ’em. I made sure they’d have the sense to lie low to-night. Purdey, those pet lambs of yours will be raising Cain directly. Come on.”
Murray was in plain clothes; but he carried
