The thought of it cheered him. He stooped to caress his two cats, which had come out to bear him the mute and pleasant company of their kind.

What a night! The great round silver moon floated serenely through space, dimming the stars as it made them, and bathing the earth in splendour. It was so light that straight black lines of smoke could be seen mounting from chimneys and open-air fires. The grass-trees which supplied the fuel for these fires spread a pleasant balsamic odour, and the live red patches contrasted oddly with the pale ardour of the moon. Lights twinkled over all the township, but were brightest in Main Street, the course of which they followed like a rope of fireflies, and at the Government Camp on the steep western slope, where no doubt, as young Purdy had impudently averred, the officials still sat over the dinner-table. It was very quiet—no grog-shops or saloons-of-entertainment in this neighbourhood, thank goodness!—and the hour was still too early for drunken roisterers to come reeling home. The only sound to be heard was that of a man’s voice singing Oft in the Stilly Night, to the yetching accompaniment of a concertina. Mahony hummed the tune.

But it was growing cold, as the nights were apt to do on this tableland once summer was past. He whistled his dog, and Pompey hurried out with a guilty air from the back of the house, where the old shaft stood that served to hold refuse. Mahony put him on the chain, and was just about to turn in when two figures rounded the corner of a tent and came towards him, pushing their shadows before them on the milk-white ground.

“’D evenin’, doc,” said the shorter of the two, a nuggetty little man who carried his arms curved out from his sides, gorilla-fashion.

“Oh, good evening, Mr. Ocock,” said Mahony, recognising a neighbour.—“Why, Tom, that you? Back already, my boy?”—this to a loutish, loose-limbed lad who followed behind.—“You don’t of course come from the meeting?”

“Not me, indeed!” gave back his visitor with gall, and turned his head to spit the juice from a plug. “I’ve got suthin’ better to do as to listen to a pack o’ jabberin’ furriners settin’ one another by th’ears.”

“Nor you, Tom?” Mahony asked the lad, who stood sheepishly shifting his weight from one leg to the other.

“Nay, nor ’im eether,” jumped in his father, before he could speak. “I’ll ’ave none o’ my boys playin’ the fool up there. And that reminds me, doc, young Smith’ll git ’imself inter the devil of a mess one o’ these days, if you don’t look after ’im a bit better’n you do. I ’eard ’im spoutin’ away as I come past—usin’ language about the Gover’ment fit to turn you sick.”

Mahony coughed. “He’s but young yet,” he said drily. “After all, youth’s youth, sir, and comes but once in a lifetime. And you can’t make lads into wiseacres between sundown and sunrise.”

“No, by Gawd, you can’t!” affirmed his companion. “But I think youth’s just a fine name for a sort o’ piggish mess. What’s the good, one ’ud like to know, of gettin’ old, and learnin’ wisdom, and knowin’ the good from the bad, when ev’ry lousy young fathead that’s born inter the world starts out again to muddle through it for ’imself, in ’is own way. And that things ’as got to go on like this, just the same, for ever and ever—why, it makes me fair tired to think of it. My father didn’t ’old with youth: ’e knocked it out of us by thrashin’, just like lyin’ and thievin’. And it’s the best way, too.—Wot’s that you say?” he flounced round on the unoffending Tom. “Nothin’? You was only snifflin’, was you? You keep your fly-trap shut, my fine fellow, and make no mousy sounds to me, or it’ll be the worse for you, I can tell you!”

“Come, Mr. Ocock, don’t be too hard on the boy.”

“Not be ’ard on ’im? When I’ve got the nasty galoon on me ’ands again like this?—Chucks up the good post I git ’im in Kilmore, without with your leave or by your leave. Too lonely for ’is lordship it was. Missed the sound o’ wimmin’s petticoats, ’e did.” He turned fiercely on his son. “’Ere, don’t you stand starin’ there! You get ’ome, and fix up for the night. Now then, wot are you dawdlin’ for, pig-’ead?”

The boy slunk away. When he had disappeared, his father again took up the challenge of Mahony’s silent disapproval.