"To tell you the truth, Sophie," Potch replied slowly, conscience-stricken that he had given the subject so little consideration, "I took it for granted there could only be one answer to the whole thing.... I haven't thought of it. I've only thought of you the last week or so. I haven't talked to Michael; I haven't even heard what the men were saying at midday.... But, of course, there's only one answer."
"I've tried to talk to Michael, but he won't discuss it with me," Sophie said.
Potch stared at her.
"You don't mean," he said—"you can't think—"
"Oh," she cried, with a gesture of desperation, "I know John Armitage is holding something over Michael ... and if it's true what he says, it'll break Michael, and it'll go very badly against the Ridge."
"You can't tell me what it is?"
Sophie shook her head.
Potch got up; his face settled into grave and fighting lines. Sophie, too, rose from the ground. They went towards the track where the three huts stood facing the scattered dumps of the old Flash-in-the-Pan rush.
"I want to see Michael," Potch said, when they approached the huts. "I'll be in, in a couple of minutes."
Sophie went on to their own home, and Potch, swerving from her, walked across to the back door of Michael's hut.
Charley was sitting on the couch, leaning towards Michael, his shoulders hunched, his eyes gleaming, when Potch went into the hut.
"You can't bluff me," Potch heard him say. "You may throw dust in the eyes of the men here, but you can't bluff me.... It was you did for me.... It was you put it over on me—took those stones."
"Well, you tell the boys," Potch heard Michael say.
His voice was as unconcerned as though it were not anything of importance they were discussing. Potch found relief in the sound of it, but its unconcern drove Charley to fury.
"You know I took them from Paul," he shouted. "You know—I can see it in your eyes ... and you took them from me. When ... how ... I don't know.... You must 've sneaked into the house when I dozed off for a bit, and put a parcel of your own rotten stuff in their place.... How do I know? Well, I'll tell you...."
He settled back on the sofa. "I hung on to the best stone in the lot—clear brown potch with good flame in it—hopin' it would give me a clue some day to the man who'd done that trick on me. But I couldn't place the stone; I'd never seen it on you, and Jun had never seen it either. I was dead stony when I sold it to Maud ... and I told her why I'd been keeping it, seeing she was in the show at the start off. She sold the stone to Armitage in America, and first thing the old man said when he saw it was: 'Why, that's Michael's mascot!'"
"Remembered when you'd got it, he said," Charley continued, taking Michael's interest with gratified malice. "First stone you'd come on, on Fallen Star, and you wouldn't sell—kept her for luck.... Old Armitage wouldn't have anything to do with the stone then—didn't believe Maud's story.... But John Lincoln got it. He told me...."
"I see," Michael murmured.
"Don't mind telling you I'm here to play Armitage's game," Charley said.
Michael nodded. "Well, what about it?"
"This about it," Charley exclaimed irritably, his excitement and impatience rising under Michael's calmness. "You're done on the Ridge when this story gets around. What I've got to say is ... you took the opals. You've got 'em. You're done for here. But you could have a good life somewhere else. Clear out, and——"
"We'll go halves, eh?" Michael queried.
"That's it," Charley assented. "I'll clear out and say nothing—although I've told Rummy enough already to give him his suspicions. Still, suspicions are only suspicions—nothing more. When I came here I didn't even mean to give you this chance.... But 'Life is sweet, brother!' There's still a few pubs down in Sydney, and a woman or two. I wouldn't go out with such a grouch against things in general if I had a flash in the pan first.... And it'd suit you all right, Michael.... With this scheme of Armitage's in the wind——"
"And suppose I haven't got the stones?" Michael inquired.
Charley half rose from the sofa, his thin hands grasping the table.
"It's a lie!" he shrieked, shivering with impotent fury. "You know it is.... What have you done with 'em then? What have you done with those stones—that's what I want to know!"
"You haven't got much breath," Michael said; "you'd better save it."
"I'll use all I've got to down you, if you don't come to light," Charley cried. "I'll do it, see if I don't."
Potch walked across to his father. He had heard Charley abusing and threatening Michael before without being able to make out what it was all about. He had thought it bluff and something in the nature of a try-on; but he had determined to put a stop to it.
"No, you won't!" he said.
"Won't I?" Charley turned on his son.
"No." Potch's tone was steady and decisive.
Charley looked towards Michael again.
"Well ... what are you going to do about it?"
"I've told you," Michael said. "Nothing."
"Did y' hear what I've been calling your saint?" Charley cried, turning to Potch. "I'm calling him what everybody on the fields'd be calling him if they knew."
Michael's gaze wavered as it went to Potch.
"A thief," Charley continued, whipping himself into a frenzy. "That's what he is—a dirty, low-down thief! I'm the ordinary, decent sort ... get the credit for what I am ... and pay for it, by God! But he—he doesn't pay. I bag all the disgrace ... and he walks off with the goods—Rouminof's stones."
Potch did not look at Michael. What Charley had said did not seem to shock or surprise him.
"I've made a perfectly fair and reasonable proposition," Charley went on more quietly. "I've told him ... if he'll go halves——"
"Guess again," Potch sneered.
Charley swung to his feet, a volley of expletives swept from him.
"I've told Rummy to get the law on his side," he cried shrilly, "and he's going to. There's one little bit of proof I've got that'll help him, and——"
"You'll get jail yourself over it," Potch said.
"Don't mind if I do," Charley shouted, and poured his rage and disappointment into a flood of such filthy abuse that Potch took him by the shoulders.
"Shut your mouth," he said. "D'y' hear?... Shut your mouth!"
Charley continued to rave, and Potch, gripping his shoulders, ran him out of the hut.
Michael heard them talking in Potch's hut—Charley yelling, threatening, and cursing. A fit of coughing seized him. Then there was silence—a hurrying to and fro in the hut. Michael heard Sophie go to the tank, and carry water into the house, and guessed that Charley's paroxysm and coughing had brought on the hemorrhage he had had two or three times since his return to the Ridge.
A little later Potch came to him.
"He's had a bleeding, Michael," Potch said; "a pretty bad one, and he's weak as a kitten. But just before it came on I told him I'd let him have a pound a week, somehow, if he goes down to Sydney at once.... But if ever he shows his face in the Ridge again ... or says a word more about you ... I've promised he'll never get another penny out of me.... He can die where and how he likes ... I'm through with him...."
Michael had been sitting beside his fire, staring into it. He had dropped into a chair and had not moved since Potch and Charley left the hut.
"Do you believe what he said, Potch?" he asked.
Michael felt Potch's eyes on his face; he raised his eyes to meet them. There was no lie in the clear depths of Potch's eyes.
"I've known for a long time," Potch said.
Michael's gaze held him—the swimming misery of it; then, as if overwhelmed by the knowledge of what Potch must be thinking of him, it fell. Michael rose from his chair before the fire and stood before Potch, his mind darkened as by shutting-off of the only light which had penetrated its gloom. He stood so for some time in utter abasement and desolation of spirit, believing that he had lost a thing which had come to be of inexpressible value to him, the love and homage Potch had given him while they had been mates.
"I've always known, too," Potch said, "it was for a good enough reason."
Michael's swift glance went to him, his soul irradiated by that unprotesting affirmation of Potch's faith.
He dropped into his chair before the fire again. His head went into his hands. Potch knew that Michael was crying. He stood by silently—unable to touch him, unable to realise the whole of Michael's tragedy, and yet overcome with love and sympathy for him. He knew only as much of it as affected Sophie. His sympathy and instinct where Sophie was concerned enabled him to guess why Michael had done what he had.
"It was for Sophie," he said.
"I intended to give them back to Paul—when she was old enough to go away, Potch," Michael said after a while. "Then she went away; and I don't know why I didn't give them to him at once. The things got hold of me, somehow—for a while, at least. I couldn't make up my mind to give them back to him—kept makin' excuses.... Then, when I did make up my mind and went to get them, they were gone."
Potch nodded thoughtfully.
"You don't suspect anybody?" he asked.
Michael shook his head. "How can I? Nobody knew I had them, and yet ... that night ... twice, I thought I had heard someone moving near me.... The memory of it's stayed with me all these years. Sometimes I think it means something—that somebody must have been near and seen and heard. Then that seems absurd. It was a bright night; I looked, and there was no one in sight. There's only one person besides you ... saw ... I think—knew I had the stones...."
"Maud?"
Michael nodded. "She came into the room with you that night. You remember? ... And I've wondered since ... if she, perhaps, or Jun ... At any rate, Armitage knows, or suspects—I don't know which it is really.... He says he has proof. There's that stone I put in Charley's parcel—a silly thing to do when you come to think of it. But I didn't like the idea of leaving Charley nothing to sell when he got to Sydney; and that was the only decent bit of stone I'd got. Making up the parcel in a hurry, I didn't think what putting in that bit of stuff might lead to. But for that, I can't think how Armitage could have proof I had the stones except through Maud. And she's been in New York, and——"
"She may have told him she saw you the night she came for me," Potch said.
"That's what I think," Michael agreed.
They brooded over the situation for a while.
"Does Sophie know?" Michael's eyes went to Potch, a sharper light in them.
"Only that some danger threatens you," Potch said slowly. "Armitage told her."
"You tell her what I've told you, Potch," Michael said.
They talked a little longer, then Potch moved to go away.
"There's nothing to be done?" he asked.
Michael shook his head.
"Things have just got to take their course. There's nothing to be done, Potch," he said.
They came to him together, Sophie and Potch, in a little while, and Sophie went straight to Michael. She put her arms round his neck and her face against his; her eyes were shining with tears and tenderness.
"Michael, dear!" she whispered.
Michael held her to him; she was indeed the child of his flesh as she was of his spirit, as he held her then.
He did not speak; he could not. Looking up, he caught Potch's eyes on him, the same expression of faith and tenderness in them. The joy of the moment was beyond words.
Potch's and Sophie's love and faith were beyond all value, precious to Michael in this time of trouble. When he had failed to believe in himself, Sophie and Potch believed in him; when his life-work seemed to be falling from his hands, they were ready to take it up. They had told him so. In his grief and realisation of failure, that thought was a star—a thing of miraculous joy and beauty.
The men stood in groups outside the hall, smoking and yarning together before going into it, on the night John Armitage was to put his proposition for reorganisation of the mines before them. Each group formed itself of men whose minds were inclined in the same direction. M'Ginnis was the centre of the crowd from the Punti rush who were prepared to accept Armitage's scheme. The Crosses, while they would not go over to the M'Ginnis faction, had a following—and the group about them was by far the largest—which was asserting an open mind until it heard what Armitage had to say. Archie and Ted Cross and the men with them, however, were suspected of a prejudice rather in favour of, than against, Armitage's outline of the new order of things for the Ridge since its main features and conditions were known. Men who were prepared at all costs to stand by the principle which had held the gougers of Fallen Star Ridge, together for so long, and whose loyalty to the old spirit of independence was immutable, gathered round George Woods and Watty Frost.
"Thing that's surprised me," Pony-Fence Inglewood murmured, "is the numbers of men there is who wants to hear what Armitage has got to say. I wouldn't 've thought there'd be so many."
"I don't like it meself, Pony," George admitted. "That's why we're here. Want to know the strength of them—and him."
"That's right," Watty muttered.
"Crosses, for instance," Pony-Fence continued. "You wouldn't 've thought Archie and Ted'd 've even listened to guff about profit-sharin'—all that.... But they've swallowed it—swallowed it all down. They say——"
George nodded gloomily. "This blasted talkin' about Michael's done more harm than anything."
"That's right," Pony-Fence said. "What's the strength of it, George?"
"Damned if I know!"
"Where's Michael to-night?"
Their eyes wandered over the scattered groups of the miners. Michael was not among them.
"Is he coming?" Pony-Fence asked.
George shrugged his shoulders; the wrinkles of his forehead lifted, expressing his ignorance and the doubt which had come into his thinking of Michael.
"Does he know what's being said?" Pony-Fence asked.
"He knows all right. I told Potch, and asked him to let Michael know about it."
"What did he say?"
"Tell you the truth, Pony-Fence, I don't understand Michael over this business," George said. "He's been right off his nest the last week or two. It might have got him down what's being said—he might be so sore about anybody thinkin' that of him, or that it's just too mean and paltry to take any notice of.... But I'd rather he'd said something.... It's played Armitage's game all right, the yarn that's been goin' round, about Michael's not being the man we think he is. And the worst of it is, you don't know exactly where it came from. Charley, of course—but it was here before him.... He's just stoked the gossip a bit. But it's done the Ridge more harm than a dozen Armitages could 've——"
"To-night'll bring things to a head," Watty interrupted, as though they had talked the thing over and he knew exactly what George was going to say next. "I reck'n we'll see better how we stand—what's the game—and the men who are going to stand by us.... Michael's with us, I'll swear; and if we've got to put up a fight ... we'll have it out with him about those yarns.... And it'll be hell for any man who drops a word of them afterwards."
When they went into the hall George and Watty marched to the front form and seated themselves there. Bully Bryant and Pony-Fence remained somewhere about the middle of the hall, as men from every rush on the fields filed into the seats and the hall filled. Potch came in and sat near Bully and Pony-Fence. As Newton, Armitage, and the American engineer crossed the platform, Michael took a seat towards the front, a little behind George and Watty. George stood up and hailed him, but Michael shook his head, indicating that he would stay where he was.
Peter Newton, after a good deal of embarrassment, had consented to be chairman of the meeting. But he looked desperately uncomfortable when he took his place behind a small table and an array of glasses and a water bottle, with John Armitage on one side of him and Mr. Andrew M'Intosh, the American engineer, on the other.
His introductory remarks were as brief as he could make them, and chiefly pointed out that being chairman of the meeting was not to be regarded as an endorsement of Mr. Armitage's plan.
John Armitage had never looked keener, more immaculate, and more of another world than he did when he stood up and faced the men that night. Most of them were smoking, and soon after the meeting began the hall was filled with a thin, bluish haze. It veiled the crowd below him, blurred the shapes and outlines of the men sitting close together along the benches, most of them wearing their working clothes, faded blueys, or worn moleskins, with handkerchiefs red or white round their throats. Their faces swam before John Armitage as on a dark sea. All the weather-beaten, sun-red, gaunt, or full, fat, daubs of faces, pallid through the smoke, turned towards him with a curious, strained, and intent expression of waiting to hear what he had to say.
Before making any statement himself, Mr. Armitage said he would ask Mr. Andrew M'Intosh, who had come with him from America some time ago to report on the field, and who was one of the ablest engineers in the United States of America, to tell what he thought of the natural resources of the Ridge, and the possibilities of making an up-to-date, flourishing town of Fallen Star under conditions proposed by the Armitage Syndicate.
Andrew M'Intosh, a meagrely-fleshed man, with squarish face, blunt features, and hair in a brush from a broad, wrinkled forehead, stood up in response to Mr. Armitage's invitation. He was a man of deeds, not words, he declared, and would leave Mr. Armitage to give them the substance of his report. His knees jerked nervously and his face and hands twitched all the time he was speaking. He had an air of protesting against what he was doing and of having been dragged into this business, although he was more or less interested in it. He confessed that he had not investigated the resources of Fallen Star Ridge as completely as he would have wished, but he had done so sufficiently to enable him to assure the people of Fallen Star that if they accepted the proposition Mr. Armitage was to lay before them, the country would back them. He himself, he said, would have confidence enough in it to throw in his lot with them, should they accept Mr. Armitage's proposition; and he gave them his word that if they did so, and he were invited to take charge of the reorganisation of the mines, he would work whole-heartedly for the success of the undertaking he and the miners of Fallen Star Ridge might mutually engage in. He talked at some length of the need for a great deal of preliminary prospecting in order to locate the best sites for mines, of the necessity for plant to use in construction works, and of the possibility of a better water supply for the township, and the advantages that would entail.
The men were impressed by the matter-of-factness of the engineer's manner and his review of technical and geological aspects of the situation, although he gave very little information they had not already possessed. When he sat down, Armitage pushed back his chair and confronted the men again.
He made his position clear from the outset. It was a straightforward business proposition he was putting before men of the Ridge, he said; but one the success of which would depend on their co-operation. As their agent of exchange with the world at large, he described the disastrous consequences the slump of the last year or so had had for both Armitage and Son and for Fallen Star, and how the system he proposed, by opening up a wider area for mining and by investigating the resources of the old mines more thoroughly under the direction of an expert mining engineer, would result in increased production and prosperity for the people of the Ridge and Fallen Star township. He saw possibilities of making a thriving township of Fallen Star, and he promised men of the Ridge that if they accepted the scheme he had outlined for them, the Armitage Syndicate would make a prosperous township of Fallen Star. In no time people: would be having electricity in their homes, water laid on, rose gardens, cabbage patches, and all manner of comforts and conveniences as a result of the improved means of communication with Budda and Sydney, which population and increased production would ensure.
In a nutshell Armitage's scheme amounted to an offer to buy up the mines for £30,000 and put the men on a wage, allowing every man a percentage of 20 per cent. profit on all stones over a certain standard and size. The men would be asked to elect their own manager, who would be expected to see that engineering and development designs were carried out, but otherwise the normal routine of work in the mines would be observed. Mr. Armitage explained that he hoped to occupy the position of general manager in the company himself, and engaged it to observe the union rates of hours and wages as they were accepted by miners and mining companies throughout the country.
When he had finished speaking there was no doubt in anyone's mind that John Lincoln Armitage had made a very pleasant picture of what life on the Ridge might be if success attended the scheme of the Armitage Syndicate, as John Armitage seemed to believe it would. Men who had been driven to consider Armitage's offer from their first hearing of it, because of the lean years the Ridge was passing through, were almost persuaded by his final exposition.
George Woods stood up.
George's strength was in his equable temper, in his downright honesty and sincerity, and in the steady common-sense with which he reviewed situations and men.
He realised the impression Armitage's statement of his scheme, and its bearing on the life of the Ridge, had made. It did not affect his own position, but he feared its influence on men who had been wavering between prospects of the old and of the new order of things for Fallen Star. In their hands, he could see now, the fate of all that Fallen Star had stood for so long, would lie.
"Well," he said, "we've got to thank you for puttin' the thing to us as clear and as square as you have, Mr. Armitage. It gives every man here a chance to see just what you're drivin' at. But I might say here and now ... I've got no time for it ... neither me nor my mates.... It'll save time and finish the business of this meeting if there's no beatin' about the bush and we understand each other right away. It sounds all right—your scheme—nice and easy. Looks as if there was more for us to get out of it than to lose by it.... I don't say it wouldn't mean easier times ... more money ... all that sort of thing. We haven't had the easiest of times here sometimes, and this scheme of yours comes ... just when we're in the worst that's ever knocked us. But speakin' for myself, and"—his glance round the hall was an appeal to that principle the Ridge stood for-"the most of my mates, we'd rather have the hard times and be our own masters. That's what we've always said on the Ridge.... Your scheme 'd be all right if we didn't feel like that; I suppose. But we do ... and as far as I'm concerned, we won't touch it. It's no go.
"We're obliged to you for putting the thing to us. We recognise you could have gone another way about getting control here. You may—-buy up a few of the mines perhaps, and try to squeeze the rest of us out. Not that I think the boys'd stand for the experiment."
"They wouldn't," Bill Grant called.
"I'm glad to hear that," George said. He tried to point out that if Fallen Star miners accepted Armitage's offer they would be shouldering conditions which would take from their work the freedom and interest that had made their life in common what it had been on the Ridge. He asked whether a weekly Wage to tide them over years of misfortune would compensate for loss of the sense of being free men; he wanted to know how they'd feel if they won a nest of knobbies worth £400 or £500 and got no more out of them than the weekly wage. The percentage on big stones was only a bluff to encourage men to hand over big stones, George said. And that, beyond the word being used pretty frequently in Mr. Armitage's argument and documents, was all the profit-sharing he could see in Mr. Armitage's scheme. He reminded the men, too, that under their own system, in a day they could make a fortune. And all there was for them under Mr. Armitage's system was three or four pounds a week—and not a bit of potch, nor a penny in the quart pot for their old age.
"We own these mines. Every man here owns his mine," George said; "that's worth more to us just now than engineers and prospecting parties.... Well have them on our own account directly, when the luck turns and there's money about again.... For the present we'll hang on to what we've got, thank you, Mr. Armitage."
He sat down, and a guffaw of laughter rolled over his last words.
"Anybody else got anything to say?" Peter Newton inquired.
M'Ginnis stood up.
He had heard a good deal of talk about men of the Ridge being free, he said, but all it amounted to was their being free to starve, as far as he could see. He didn't see that the men's ownership of the mines meant much more than that—the freedom to starve. It was all very well for them to swank round about being masters of their own mines; any fool could be master of a rubbish heap if he was keen enough on the rubbish heap. But as far as he was concerned, M'Ginnis declared, he didn't see the point. What they wanted was capital, and Mr. Armitage had volunteered it on what were more than ordinarily generous terms....
It was all very well for a few shell-backs who, because they had been on the place in the early days, thought they had some royal prerogative to it, to cut up rusty when their ideas were challenged. But their ideas had been given a chance; and how had they worked out? It was all very well to say that if a man was master of his own mine he stood a chance of being a millionaire at a minute's notice; but how many of them were millionaires? As a matter of fact, not a man on the Ridge had a penny to bless himself with at that moment, and it was sheer madness to turn down this offer of Mr. Armitage's. For his part he was for it, and, what was more, there was a big body of the men in the hall for it.
"If it's put to the vote whether people want to take on or turn down Mr. Armitage's scheme, we'll soon see which way the cat's jumping," M'Ginnis said. "People'd have the nause to see which side their bread's buttered on—not be led by the nose by a few fools and dreamers. For my part, I don't see why——"
"You're not paid to," a voice called from the back of the hall.
"I don't see why," M'Ginnis repeated stolidly, ignoring the interruption, "the ideas of three or four men should be allowed to rule the roost. What's wanted on the Ridge is a little more horse sense——"
Impatient and derisive exclamations were hurled at him; men sitting near M'Ginnis shouted back at the interrupters. It looked as if the meeting were going to break up in uproar, confusion, and fighting all round. Peter Newton knocked on the table and shouted himself hoarse trying to restore order. The voices of George, Watty, and Pony-Fence Inglewood were heard howling over the din:
"Let him alone."
"Let's hear what he's got to say."
Then M'Ginnis continued his description of the advantages to be gained by the acceptance of Mr. Armitage's offer.
"And," he wound up, "there's the women and children to think of." At the back of the hall somebody laughed. "Laugh if you like"—M'Ginnis worked himself into a passion of virtuous indignation—"but I don't see there's anything to laugh at when I say remember what those things are goin' to mean to the women and children of this town—what a few of the advantages of civilisation——"
"Disadvantages!" the same voice called.
"—Comforts and conveniences of civilisation are goin' to mean to the women and children of this God-forsaken hole," M'Ginnis cried furiously. "If I had a wife and kids, d'ye think I'd have any time for this high-falutin' flap-doodle of yours about bread and fat? Not much. The best in the country wouldn't be too good for them—and it's not good enough for the women and children of Fallen Star. That's what I've got to say—and that's what any decent man would say if he could see straight. I'm an ordinary, plain, practical man myself ... and I ask you chaps who've been lettin' your legs be pulled pretty freely—-and starvin' to be masters of your own dumps—to look at this business like ordinary, plain, practical men, who've got their heads screwed on the right way, and not throw away the chance of a lifetime to make Fallen Star the sort of township it ought to be. If there's some men here want to starve to be masters of their own dumps, let 'em, I say: it's a free country. But there's no need for the rest of us to starve with 'em."
He sat down, and again it seemed that the pendulum had swung in favour of Armitage and his Scheme.
"What's Michael got to say about it?" a man from the Three Mile asked. And several voices called: "Yes; what's Michael got to say?"
For a moment there was silence—a silence of apprehension. George Woods and the men who knew, or had been disturbed by the stories they had heard of a secret treaty between Michael and John Armitage, recognised in that moment the power of Michael's influence; that what Michael was going to say would sway the men of the Ridge as it had always done, either for or against the standing order of life on the Ridge on which they had staked so much. His mates could not doubt Michael, and yet there was fear in the waiting silence.
Those who had heard Michael was not the man they thought he was, waited anxiously for his movement, the sound of his voice. Charley Heathfield waited, crouched in a corner near the platform, where everyone could see him, Rouminof beside him. They were standing there together as if there was not room for them in the body of the hall, and their eyes were fixed on the place where Michael sat—Charley's eager and cruel as a cat's on its victim, Rouminof's alight with the fires of his consuming excitement.
Then Michael got up from his seat, took off his hat; and his glance, those deep-set eyes of his, travelled the hall, skimming the heads and faces of the men in it, with their faint, whimsical smile.
"All I've got to say," he said, "George Woods has said. There's nothing in Mr. Armitage's scheme for Fallen Star.... It looks all right, but it isn't; it's all wrong. The thing this place has stood for is ownership of the mines by the men who work them. Mr. Armitage 'll give us anything but that—he offers us every inducement but that ... and you know how the thing worked out on the Cliffs. If the mines are worth so much to him, they're worth as much, or more, to us.
"Boiled down, all the scheme amounts to is an offer to buy up the mines—at a 'fair valuation'—put us on wages and an eight-hour day. All the rest, about making a flourishing and, up-to-date town of Fallen Star, might or mightn't come true. P'raps it would. I can't say. All I say is, it's being used to gild the pill we're asked to swallow—buyin' up of the mines. There's nothing sure about all this talk of electricity and water laid on; it's just gilding. And supposing the new conditions did put more money about—did bring the comforts and conveniences of civilisation to Fallen Star—like M'Ginnis says—what good would they be to the people, women and children, too, if the men sold themselves like a team of bullocks to work the mines? It wouldn't matter to them any more whether they brought up knobbies or mullock; they'd have their wages—like bullocks have their hay. It's because our work's had interest; it's because we've been our own bosses, life's been as good as it has on Fallen Star all these years. If a man hasn't got interest in his work he's got to get it somewhere. How did we get it on the Cliffs when the mines were bought up? Drinking and gambling ... and how did that work out for the women and children? But it was stone silly of M'Ginnis to talk of women and children here. We know that old hitting-below-the-belt gag of sweating employers too well to be taken in by it. By and by, if you took on the Armitage scheme, and there was a strike in the mines, he'd be saying that to you: 'Remember the women and children.'"
Colour flamed in Michael's face, and he continued with more heat than there had yet been in his voice.
"The time's coming when the man who talks 'women and children' to defeat their own interests will be treated like the skunk—the low-down, thieving swine he is. Do we say anything's too good for our women and children? Not much. But we want to give them real things—the real things of life and happiness—not only flashy clothes and fixings. If we give our women and children the mines as we've held them, and the record of a clean fight for them, we'll be giving them something very much bigger than anything Mr. Armitage can offer us in exchange for them. The things we've stood for are better than anything he's got to offer. We've got here what they're fighting for all over the world ... it's bigger than ourselves.
"M'Ginnis says he's heard a lot of 'the freedom to starve on the Ridge'—it's more than I have, it's a sure thing if he wants to starve, nobody'd stop him...."
A wave of laughter passed over the hall.
"But most of us here haven't any fancy for starving, and what's more, nobody has ever starved on the Ridge. I don't say that we haven't had hard times, that we haven't gone on short commons—we have; but we haven't starved, and we're not going to....
"This talk of buying up the mines comes at the only time it would have been listened to in the last half-dozen years. It hits us when we're down, in a way; but the slump'll pass. There've been slumps before, and they've passed.... Mr. Armitage thinks so, or he wouldn't be so keen on getting hold of the mines.
"And as to production of stone and development of the mines, it seems to me we can do more ourselves than any Proprietary Company, Ltd., or syndicate ever made could. Didn't old Mr. Armitage, himself, say once that he didn't know a better conducted or more industrious mining community than this one. 'Why d'y' think that is?' I asked him. He said he didn't know. I said, 'You don't think the way the men feel about their work's got anything to do with it?' 'Damn it, Michael,' he said, 'I don't want to think so.'
"And I happen to know"—Michael smiled slightly towards John Armitage, who was gazing at him with tense features and hands tightly folded and crossed under his chin—"that the old man is opposed even now to this scheme because he thinks he won't get as much black opal out of us as he does under our own way of doing things. He remembers the Cliffs, and what taking over of the mines did for opal—and the men—there. This scheme is Mr. John Armitage's idea....
"He's put it to you. You've heard what it is. All I've got to say now is, don't touch it. Don't have anything to do with it.... It'll break us ... the spirit of the men here ... and it'll break what we've been working on all these years. If it means throwing that up, don't let us see which side our bread's buttered on, as Mr. M'Ginnis says. Let us say like we always have—like we've been proud to say: 'We'll eat bread and fat, but we'll be our own masters!'"
"We'll eat bread and fat, but we'll be our own masters!" the men who were with Michael roared.
He sat down amid cheers. George and Watty turned in their seats to beam at him, filled with rejoicing.
Armitage rose from his chair and shifted his papers as though he had not quite decided what he intended to say.
"I'm not going to ask this meeting for a decision," he began.
"You can have it!" Bully Bryant yelled.
"There's a bit of a rush at Blue Pigeon Creek, and I'm going on up there," John Armitage continued. "I'm due in Sydney at the end of the month—that is, a month from this date—and I'll run up then for your answer to the proposition which has been laid before you. I have said all there is to say about it, except that, notwithstanding anything which may have been asserted to the contrary, I hope you will give your gravest consideration to an enterprise, I am convinced, would be in the best interests of this town and of the people of Fallen Star Ridge. I think, however, you ought to know——"
"That Michael Brady's a liar and a thief!" Charley cried, springing from his corner as if loosed from some invisible leash. "If you believe him, you're believing a liar and a thief. Mr. Armitage knows ... I know ... and Paul knows——"
"Throw him out."
"He's mad!"
The cries rose in a tumult of angry voices. When they were at their height M'Ginnis was seen on his feet and waving his arms.
"Let him say what he's got to!" he shouted. "You chaps know as well as I do what's been going the rounds, and we might as well have it out now. If it's not true, Michael'd rather have the strength of it, and give you his answer ... and if there is anything in it, we've got a right to know."
"That's right!" some of the men near him chorused.
Newton looked towards George, and George towards Michael.
"Might as well have it," Michael said.
Charley, who had been hustled against the wall by Potch and Bully Bryant, was loosed. He moved a few steps forward so that everyone could see him, and breathlessly, shivering, in a frenzy of triumphant malice, told his story. Rouminof, carried away by excitement, edged alongside him, chiming into what he was saying with exclamations and chippings of corroboration.
When Charley had finished talking and had fallen back exhausted, Armitage left his chair as if to continue what he had been going to say when Charley took the floor. Instead, he hesitated, and, feeling his way through the silence of consternation and dismay which had stricken everybody, said uncertainly:
"Much as I regret having to do so, I consider it my duty to state that Charley Heathfield's story, as far as I know it, is substantially correct. Some time ago I was sold a stone in New York. As soon as he saw it, my father said, 'Why, that's Michael's mascot.' I asked him if he were sure, and he declared that he could not be mistaken about the stone....
"I told him the story I had got with it. Charley has already told you. That stone came from a parcel Charley supposed contained Rouminof's opals—the one Paul got when Jun Johnson and he had a run of luck together. The parcel did not contain Rouminof's opals, and had been exchanged for the parcel which did, either while Rouminof and Charley were going home together or after he had taken them from Rouminof. My father refused to believe that Michael Brady had anything to do with the business. I made further inquiries, and satisfied myself that the man who had always seemed to me the soul of honour and a pattern of the altruistic virtues, I must confess, was responsible for placing that stone in the parcel Charley took down to Sydney ... and also that Michael had possession of Rouminof's opals. Mrs. Johnson will swear she saw Rouminof's stones on the table of Michael Brady's hut one evening nearly two years ago.
"I approached Michael myself to try to discover more of the stones. He denied all knowledge of them. But now, before you all, and because it seems to me an outrageous thing for people to ruin themselves on account of their belief in a man who is utterly unworthy of it, I accuse Michael Brady of having stolen Rouminof's opals. If he has anything to say, now is the time to say it."
What Armitage said seemed to have paralysed everybody. The silence was heavier, more dismayed than it had been a few minutes before. Nobody spoke nobody moved. Michael's friends sat with hunched shoulders, not looking at each other, their gaze fixed ahead of them, or on the place where Michael was sitting, waiting to see his face and to hear the first sound of his voice. Potch, who had gone to hold his father back when Charley had made his attack on Michael, stood against the wall, his eyes on Michael, his face illumined by the fire of his faith. His glance swept the crowd as if he would consign it to perdition for its doubt and humiliation of Michael. The silence was invaded by a stir of movement, the shuffle of feet. People began to mutter and whisper together. Still Michael did not move. George Woods turned round to him.
"For God's sake speak, Michael," he said. Michael did not move.
Then from the back of the hall marched Snow-Shoes. Tall and stately, he strode up the narrow passage between the rows of seats wedged close together. People watched him with an abstract curiosity, their minds under the shadow of the accusation against Michael, waiting only to hear what he would say to it. When Snow-Shoes reached the top of the hall he turned and faced the men He held up a narrow package wrapped in newspaper and before them all handed it to Rouminof, who was still hovering near the edge of the platform.
"Your stones," he said. "I took them." And in the same stately, measured fashion he had entered, he walked out of the hall again.
Cheers resounded, cheers on cheers, until the roof rang. There was no hearing anything beyond cheers and cries for Michael. People crushed round him shaking his hand, clinging to him, tears in their eyes. When order was achieved again, it was found that Paul was on the platform going over the stones with Armitage, Newton looking on. Paul was laughing and crying; he had forgotten Charley, forgotten everything but his joy in fingering his lost gems.
When there was a lull in the tempest of excitement and applause, Armitage spoke.
"I've got to apologise to you, Michael," he said. "I do most contritely.... I don't yet understand—but the facts are, the opals are here, and Mr. Riley has said—"
Michael stood up. His mouth moved and twisted as though he were going to speak before his voice was heard. When it was, it sounded harsh and as if only a great effort of will drove it from him.
"I want to say," he said, "I did take those stones ... not from Paul ... but from Charley."
His words went through the heavy quiet slowly, a vibration of his suffering on every one of them. He told how he had seen Charley and Paul going home together, and how he had seen Charley take the package of opals from Rouminof's pocket and put them in his own.
"I didn't want the stones," Michael cried, "I didn't ever want them for myself.... It was for Paul I took them back, but I didn't want him to have them just then...."
Haltingly, with the same deadly earnestness, he went over the promise he had made to Sophie's mother, and why he did not want Paul to have the stones and to use them to take Sophie away from the Ridge. But she had gone soon after, and what he had done was of no use. When he explained why he had not then, at once, returned the opals he did not spare himself.
Paul had had sun-stroke; but Michael confessed that from the first night he had opened the parcel and had gone over the stones, he had been reluctant to part with them; he had found himself deferring returning them to Paul, making excuses for not doing so. He could not explain the thing to himself even.... He had not looked at the opals except once again, and then it was to see whether, in putting them away hurriedly the first time, any had tumbled out of the tin among his books. Then Potch and Maud had seen him. Afterwards he realised where he was drifting—how the stones were getting hold of him—and in a panic, knowing what that meant, he had gone for the parcel intending to take it to Paul at once and tell him how he, Michael, came to have anything to do with his opals, just as he was telling them. But the parcel was gone.
Michael said he could not think who had found it and taken it away; but now it was clear. Probably Snow-Shoes had known all the time he had the stones. The more he thought of it, the more Michael believed it must have been so. He remembered the slight stir on the shingly soil as he came from the hut on the night he had taken the opals from Charley. It was just that slight sound Snow-Shoes' moccasins made on the shingle. Exclamations and odd queries Snow-Shoes had launched from time to time came back to Michael. He had no doubt, he said, that Mr. Riley had taken the stones to do just what he had done—and because he feared the influence possession of them was having on him, Michael, since they should have been returned to Paul long ago.
"That's the truth, as far as I know it," Michael said. "There's been attempts made to injure ... the Ridge, our way of doing things here, because of me, and because of those stones.... What happened to me doesn't matter. What happens to the Ridge and the mines does matter. I done wrong. I know I done wrong holding those stones. I'd give anything now if I—if I'd given them to Paul when Sophie went away. But I didn't ... and I'll stand by anything the men who've been my mates care to say or do about that. Only don't let the Ridge, and our way of doing things here, get hurt through me. That's bigger—it means more than any man. Don't let it! ... I'd ask George to call a meeting, and get the boys to say what they think about all this—and where I stand."
Michael put on his hat, dragged it down over his eyes, and walked out of the hall.
When the slow fall of his footsteps no longer sounded on the wooden floor, George Woods rose from his place on the front bench. He turned and faced the men. The smoke from their smouldering pipes had created such a fog that he could see only the bulk of those on the near rows of forms. With the exception of M'Ginnis and half a dozen Punti men who had the far end of one of the front seats, the mass of men in the hall, who a few moments before had been cheering for Michael, were as inert as blown balloons. Depression was in every line of their heavy, squatted shapes and unlighted countenances.
"Well," George said, "it's been a bit of a shock what we've just heard. It wasn't easy what Michael's just done ... and Snow-Shoes, if he'd wanted it, had provided the get-out. But Michael he wouldn't have it.... At whatever cost to himself, he wanted you to have the truth and to stand by the Ridge ... he'd stand by it at any cost.... If there's a doubt in anyone's mind as to what he is, what he's just done proves Michael. I don't say, as he says himself, that it wouldn't have been better if he had handed the stones over to Paul when Sophie went away ... but after all, what does that amount to as far as Michael's concerned? We've got his record, every one of us, his life here. Does anybody know a mean or selfish thing he's ever done, Michael?"
No one spoke, and George went on:
"Michael's asked for trial by his mates—and we've got to give it to him, if it's only to clear up the whole of this business and be done with it.... I move we meet here to-morrow night to settle the thing."
There was a rumbling murmur, and staccato exclamations of assent. Men in back seats moved to the door; others surged after them. Armitage and his proposals were forgotten.
When Michael got back to his hut he found Martha there.
"Oh, Michael," she said, "a dreadful thing has happened."
Michael stared at her, unable to understand what she said. It seemed to him all the terrible things that could happen had happened that evening.
"While you were away Arthur Henty came here to see Sophie," Martha said. "She hasn't been feeling well ... and I came up to have a look at her. She's been doing too much lately. Things haven't been too right between her and Potch, either, and that's her way of taking it out of herself. Arthur was here when I got here, Michael, and—you never heard anything like the way he went on...."
Michael had fallen wearily into his chair while she was talking.
Martha continued, knowing that the sooner she got rid of her story the better it would be for both of them.
"It's an old story, of course, this about Arthur Henty and Sophie.... When he was ill after the ball he talked a good bit about her.... He always has ... to me. I was with his mother when he was born ... and he's always called me Mother M'Cready like the rest of you. He told me long ago he'd always been fond of Sophie.... He didn't know at first, he said. He was a fool; he didn't like being teased about her.... Then she went away.... He doesn't seem to know why he got married except that his people wanted him to.
"After the ball he'd made up his mind they were going away together, Sophie and he. But while he was ill ... before he was able to get around again, Sophie married Potch. Then he went mad, stark, starin' mad, and started drinking. He's been drinking hard ever since.... And to-night when he came, he just went over to Sophie.... She was lying on the couch under the window, Michael.... He said, I've got a horse for you outside. Sophie didn't seem to realise what he meant at first. Then she did. I don't know how he guessed she wouldn't go ... but the next minute he was on his knees beside her ... and you never heard anything like it, Michael—the way he went on, sobbing and crying out—I never want to hear anything like it again.... I couldn't 've stood it meself.... I'd 've done anything in the world if a man'd gone on to me like that. And Sophie ... she put her arms round him, and mothered him like.... Then she began to cry too.... And there they were, both crying and sayin' how much they loved each other ... how much they'd always loved each other....
"It fair broke me up, Michael.... I didn't know what to do. They didn't seem to notice me.... Then he said again they'd go away together, and begin life all over again. Sophie tried to tell him it was too late to think of that.... They both had responsibilities they'd ought to stand by.... Hers was the Ridge and the Ridge life, she said.... He didn't understand.... He only understood he wanted her to go away with him, and she wouldn't go...."
Michael was so spent in body and mind that what Martha was saying did not at first make any impression on his mind. She seemed to be telling him a long and dolorous tale of something which had happened a long time ago, to people he had once known. In a waking nightmare, realisation that it was Sophie she was talking of dawned on him.
"He tried to make her," Martha was saying when he began to listen intently. "He said he'd been weak and a fool all his days. But he wasn't any more. He was strong now. He knew what he wanted, and he meant to have it.... Sophie was his, he said. Nothing in the world would ever make her anything but his. She knew it, and he knew it.... And Sophie hid her face in her hands. He took her hands away from her face and dragged her to her feet. He asked her if he was her mate.
"She said 'Yes.'
"'Then you've got to come with me,' he said.
"But she wouldn't go, Michael. She tried to explain it was the Ridge—what the Ridge stood for—she must stay to work for. She'd sworn to, she said. He cursed the Ridge and all of us, Michael. He said that he wouldn't let her go on living with Potch—be his wife. That he'd kill her, and himself, and Potch, rather than let her.... I never heard a man go on like he did, Michael. I never want to again. Half the time he was raging mad, then crying like a child. But in the end he said, quite quietly:
"'Will you come with me, Sophie?'
"And she said, quiet like that, too, 'No.'
"He went out of the hut.... I heard him ride away. Sophie cried after him. She put out her arms ... but she couldn't speak. And if you had seen her face, Michael——She just stood there against the wall, listening to the hoof-beats.... When we couldn't hear them any more, she stood there listening just the same. I went to her and tried to—to waken her—she seemed to have gone off into a sort of trance, Michael.... After a while she did wake; but she looked at me as if she didn't know me. She walked about for a bit, she walked round the table, and then she went out as though she were goin' for a walk. I told her not to go far ... not to be long ... but I don't think she heard me.... I watched her walking out towards the old rush.... And she isn't back yet...."
"It's too much," Michael muttered.
He sat with his head buried in his hands.
"What's to be done about it?" he asked at last.
Martha shook her head.
"I don't know. Sophie'll go through with her part, I suppose ... as her mother did."
Michael's face quivered.
"He's such an outsider," he groaned. "Sophie'd never give up the things we stand for here, now she understands them."
"That's just it," Martha said. "She doesn't want to—but there's something stronger than herself draggin' at her ... it's something that's been in all the women she's come of—the feeling a woman's got for the man who's her mate. Sophie married Potch, it's my belief, to get away from this man. She wanted to chain herself to us and her life here. She wants to stay with us.... She was kept up at first by ideas of duty and sacrifice, and serving something more than her own happiness. But love's like murder, Michael—it must out, and it's a good thing it must...."
"And what about Potch?" Michael asked.
"Potch?" Martha smiled. "The dear lad ... he'll stand up to things. There are people like that—and there're people like Arthur Henty who can't stand up to things. It's not their fault they're made that way ... and they go under when they have too much to bear."
"Curse him," Michael groaned. "I wish he'd kept out of our lives."
"So do I," Martha said; "but he hasn't."
Potch came in. He looked from Martha to Michael.
"Where's Sophie?" he asked.
"She ... went out for a walk, a while ago," Martha said.
At first Martha believed Potch knew what had happened. In his eyes there was an awe and horror which communicated itself to Martha and Michael, and held them dumb.
"Henty has shot himself down in the tank paddock," he said at length.
Martha uttered a low wail. Michael looked at Potch, waiting to hear further.
"Some of the boys going home to the Three Mile heard the shot, and went over," Potch said. "I wanted to tell Sophie myself.... They were looking for you in the town, Martha."
"Oh!" Martha got up and went to the door.
"He's at Newton's," Potch said. "Which way did Sophie go?"
"She went towards the Old Town, Potch," Martha said.
The chestnut Arthur Henty had brought for Sophie, still standing with reins over a post of the goat-pen, whinnied when he saw them at the door of the hut. Potch looked at him as if he were wondering why the horse was there—a vague perplexity defined itself through the troubled abstraction of his gaze. His eyes went to Martha as if asking her how the horse came to be there; but she did not offer any explanation. She went off down the track to Newton's, and he struck out towards the Old Town.
Potch wandered over the plains looking for Sophie. She was not in any of her usual haunts. He wandered, looking for her, calling her, wondering what this news would mean to her. Vaguely, instinctively he knew. Prom the time of their marriage nothing had been said between them of Arthur Henty.
"Sophie! Sophie!" he called.
The stars were swarming points of silver fire in the blue-black sky. He wandered, calling still. Desolation overwhelmed him because he could not find Sophie; because she was in none of the places they had spent so much time in together. It was significant that she should not be in any of them, he felt. He could not bear to think she was eluding him, and yet that was what she had done all her life. She had been with him, smiling, elfish and tender one moment, and gone the next. She had always been elusive. For a long time a presentiment of desolation and disaster had overshadowed him. Again and again he had been able to draw breath of relief and assure himself that the indefinable dread which was always with him was a chimera of his too absorbing, too anxious love. But the fear, instinctive, prophetic, begotten by consciousness of the slight grasp he had of her, had remained.
That morning even, before he had gone off to work, she had taken his face in her hands. He had seen tenderness and an infinite gentleness in her eyes.
"Dear Potch," she had said, and kissed him.
She had withdrawn from him before the faint chill which her words and the light pressure of her lips diffused, had left him. And now he was wandering over the plains looking for her, calling her.... He had done so before.... Sophie liked to wander off like this by herself. Sometimes he had found her in a place where they often sat together; sometimes she had been in the hut before him; sometimes she had come in a long time after him, wearily, a strange, remote expression on her face, as if long gazing at the stars or into the darkness which overhung the plains had deprived her of some earthliness.
He did not know how long he walked over the plains and along the Ridge, looking for her, his soul in that cry:
"Sophie! Sophie!"
He wandered for hours before he went back to the hut, and saw Michael coming out to meet him.
"She knows, Potch," Michael said.
Potch waited for him to continue.
"Says nobody told her.... She heard the shot ... and knew," Michael said.
Potch exclaimed brokenly. He asked how Sophie was. Michael said she had come in and had lain down on the sofa as though she were very tired. She had been lying there ever since, so still that Michael was alarmed. He had called Paul and sent him to find Martha. Sophie had not cried at all, Michael said.
She was lying on the sofa under the window, her hair thrown back from her face when Potch went into the hut. He closed his eyes against the sight of her face; he could not see Sophie in the grip of such pain. He knelt beside her.
"Sophie! Sophie!" he murmured, the inarticulate prayer of his love and anguish in those words.
The men met to talk about Michael next evening. The meeting was informal, but every man on the fields had come to Fallen Star for it. The hall was filled to the doors as it had been the the night before, but the crowd had none of the elastic excitement and fighting spirit, the antagonisms and enthusiasms, which had gone off from it in wave-like vibrations the night before. News of Arthur Henty's death had left everybody aghast, and awakened realisation of the abysses which even a life that seemed to move easily could contain. The shock of it was on everybody; the solemnity it had created in the air.
George Woods, elected spokesman for the men, and Roy O'Mara deputed to take notes of the meeting because he was reckoned to be a good penman, sat at a table on the platform. Michael took a chair just below the platform, facing the men. He was there to answer questions. No one had asked him to be present, but it was the custom when men of the Ridge were holding an inquiry of the sort for the man or men concerned to have seats in front of the platform, and Michael had gone to sit there as soon as the men were in their places.
"This isn't like any other inquiry we've had on the Ridge," George Woods said. "You chaps know how I feel about it—I told you last night. But Michael was for it, and I take it he's come here to answer any questions ... and to clear this thing up once and for all.... He's put his case to you. He says he'll stand by what you say—the judgment of his mates."
Anxious to spare Michael another recital of what had happened, he went on:
"There's no need for Michael to repeat what he said last night. If there's any man here wasn't in the hall, these are the facts."
He repeated the story Michael had told, steadily, clearly, and impartially.
"If there's any man wants to ask a question on those facts, he can do it now."
George sat down, and M'Ginnis was on his feet the same instant; his bat-like ears twitching, his shoulders hunched, his whole tall, thin frame strung to the pitch of nervous animosity.
"I want to know," he said, "what reason there is for believing a word of it. Michael Brady's as good as admitted he's been fooling you for goodness knows how long, and I don't see——"
"Y' soon will, y'r bleedin', blasted, fly-blown fool," Bully Bryant roared, rising and pushing back his sleeves.
"Sit down, Bull," George Woods called.
"The question is," he added, "what reason is there for believing what Michael says?"
"His word's enough," somebody called.
"Some of us think so," George said. "But there's some don't. Is there anyone else can say, Michael?"
Michael shook his head. He thought of Snow-Shoes, but the old man had refused to be present at the inquiry or to have anything to do with it. He had pretended to be deaf when he was asked anything about Paul's opals. And Michael, who could only surmise that Snow-Shoes' reasons for having taken the stones in a measure resembled his own when he took them from Paul, would not have him put to the torture of questioning.
George had said: "It might make a lot of difference to Michael if you'd come along, Mr. Riley."
But Snow-Shoes had marched off from him as if he had not heard anyone speak, his blue eyes fixed on that invisible goal he was always gazing at and going towards.
George had not seen him come into the hall; but when he was needed, his tall figure, white clad and straight as a dead tree, rose at the back of the hall.
"It's true," he said. "I wanted to be sure of Michael; I shadowed him. I saw him with the stones when he says. I did not see him with them any other time."
He sat down again; his eyes, which had flashed, resumed their steady, distant stare; his features relapsed into their mask of impassivity.
M'Ginnis sprang to his feet again.
"That's all very well," he cried, sticking to his question. "But it's not my idea of evidence. It wouldn't stand in any law court in the country. Snow-Shoes——"
"Shut up!"
"Sit down!"
Half a dozen voices growled.
Because of the respect and affection they had for him, and because of a certain aloof dignity he had with them, no man on the Ridge ever addressed Snow-Shoes as anything but Mr. Riley. They resented M'Ginnis calling him "Snow-Shoes" to his face, and guessed that he had been going to say something which would reflect on Snow-Shoes' reliability as a witness. They admitted his eccentricity; but they would not admit that his mental peculiarities amounted to more than that. Above all, they were not going to have his feelings hurt by this outsider from the Punti rush.
Broad-shouldered, square and solid, Bill Grant towered above the men about him. "This doesn't pretend to be a court of law, Mister M'Ginnis," he remarked, with an irony and emphasis which never failed of their mark when he used them, although he rarely did, and only once or twice had been heard to speak, at any gathering. "It's an inquiry by men of the Ridge into the doings of one of their mates. What they want to know is the rights of this business ... and what you consider evidence doesn't matter. It's what the men in this hall consider evidence matters. And, what's more, I don't see why you're butting into our affairs so much: you're not one of us—you're a newcomer. You've only been a year or so in the place ... and this concerns only men of the Ridge, who stand by the Ridge ways of doing things.... Michael's here to be judged by his mates ... not by you and your sort.... If you'd the brain of a louse, you'd understand—this isn't a question of law, but of principle—honour, if you like to call it that."
"Does the meeting consider the question answered?" George Woods inquired when Bill Grant sat down.
"Yes!"
A chorus of voices intoned the answer.
"If you believe Michael's story, there's nothing more to be said," George continued. "Does any man want to ask Michael a question?"
No one replied for a moment. Then M'Ginnis exclaimed incoherently.
"Shut up!"
"Sit down!"
Men cried out all over the hall.
"That's all, I think, Michael," George said, looking down to where Michael sat before the platform; and Michael, pulling his hat further over his eyes, went out of the hall.
It was the custom for men of the Ridge to talk over the subject of their inquiry together after the man or men with whom the meeting was concerned had left the hall, before giving their verdict.
When Michael had gone, George Woods said:
"The boys would like to hear what you've got to say, I think, Archie."
He looked at Archie Cross. "You and Michael haven't been seein' eye to eye lately, and if there's any other side in this business, it's the side that lost confidence in Michael when we were fed-up with all that whispering. You know Michael, and you're a good Ridge man, though you were ready to take on Armitage's scheme. The boys'd like to hear what you've got to say, I'm sure."
Archie Cross stood up; he rolled his hat in his hands. His face, hacked out of a piece of dull flesh, sun-reddened, moved convulsively; his hair was roughed-up from it; his small, sombre eyes went with straight lightnings to the men in the hall about him.
"It's true—what George says," he said after a pause, as if it were difficult for him to express his thought. "I haven't been seein' eye to eye with Michael lately ... and I listened to all the dirty gossip that mob"—he glanced towards M'Ginnis and the men with him—"put round about him. It was part that ... and part listening to their talk about money invested here making all the difference to Fallen Star ... and the children growing up ... and gettin' scared and worried about seein' them through ... made me go agin you boys lately, and let that lot get hold of me.... But this business about Michael's shown me where I am. Michael's stood for one thing all through—the Ridge and the hanging on to the mines for us.... He's been a better Ridge man than I have.... And I want to say ... as far as I'm concerned, Michael's proved himself.... I don't reck'n hanging on to opals was anything ... no more does Ted. It's the sort of thing a chap like Michael'd do absent-minded ... not noticin' what he was doin'; but when he did notice—and got scared thinkin' where he was gettin' to, and what it might look like, he couldn't get rid of 'em quick, enough. That's what I think, and that's what Ted thinks, too. He hasn't got the gift of the gab, Ted, or he'd say so himself.... If there's goin' to be opposition to Michael, it's not comin' from us.... And we've made up our minds we stand by the Ridge."
"Good old Archie!" somebody shouted.
"What have you got to say, Roy?" George Woods faced his secretary who had been scratching diligently throughout the meeting. "You've been more with the M'Ginnis lot, too, than with us, lately."
Roy flushed and sprang to his feet.
"I'm in the same boat with Archie and Ted," he said. "Except about the family ... mine isn't so big yet as it might be. But it's a fact, I funked, not having had much luck lately.... But if ever I go back on the Ridge again ... may the lot of you go back on me."
Exclamations of approbation and goodwill reverberated as Roy subsided into his chair again.
"That's all there is to be said on the subject, I think," George Woods remarked.
"Michael wanted his mates to know what he had done—and why he had done it. He's asked for judgment from his mates.... If he'd wanted to go back on us he could have done it; he could have done it quite easy. Armitage would have shut up on his suspicions about the stones. Charley could have been bought. Michael need never 've faced all this as far as I can see ... but he decided to face it rather than give up all we've been fightin' for here. He'd rather take all the dirt we care to sling at him than anything they could give him ... and that's why M'Ginnis has been up against him like he has. Michael has queered his pitch, and most of us have a notion that M'Ginnis has been here to do Armitage's work ... work up discontent and ill-feeling amongst us, and split our ranks; and he came very near doing it. If Michael hadn't 've stood by us, like he's always done, we'd have the Armitage Syndicate on our backs by now."
"To tell you the truth, boys," George went on, after a moment's hesitation, and then as if the impulse to speak a secret thought were too strong for him, "I've always thought Michael was too good. And if those stones did get hold of him for a couple of weeks, like he says, all it proves, as far as I can see, is that Michael isn't any plaster saint, but a man like the rest of us."