ibald men came out of the bush at
intervals to 'melt' their savings at the Drovers' Arms. The Yarraman
sale-yards for cattle and sheep were near Waddy too, and brought dusty
drovers and droughty stockmen in crowds to the town ship every Tuesday.
These men were indiscreet and indiscriminate drinkers, and often a
vagrant was left behind to finish a spree that surrounded him with
unheard-of reptiles and strange kaleidoscopic animals unknown to the
zoologist. It must be admitted, too, that Joel Ham, B.A., was in a
measure responsible for the boys' unlawful knowledge. Twice at holiday
times, when he was not restricted at the Drovers' Arms, he had continued
his libations until it was necessary for his own good and the peace of
the place to tie him down in his bunk and set a guard over him; and on
one of these occasions he had created much excitement by rushing through
the township at midnight, scantily clad, under the impression that he was
being pursued by a tall dark gentleman in a red cloak and possessed of
both horns and hoofs.

It was nearly nine o'clock that night when the four conspirators met to
carry out their nefarious project. Dick was carrying a bag--in which was
the joey--a bull's-eye lantern, various coloured feathers, and other
small necessaries, and the party hastened in the direction of Mr. Ham's
humble residence. Ham was 'a hatter'--he lived alone in a secluded place
on the other side of the quarries. The house was large for Waddy, and had
once been a boarding-house, but was now little better than a ruin. The
schoolmaster had reclaimed one room, furnished it much like a miner's
but, with the addition of a long shelf of tattered books, and here he
'batched,' perfectly contented with his lot for all that Waddy could ever
discover to the contrary. There was no other house within a quarter of a
mile of the ruin, which was hemmed in with four rows of wattles, and
surrounded by a wilderness of dead fruit-trees--victims to the ravages of
the goats of the township--and a tangled scrub of Cape broom. The boys
approached the house with quite unnecessary caution, keeping along the
string of dry quarry-holes, and creeping towards the back door through
the thick growth as warily as so many Indians on the trail. Dick Haddon
cared nothing for an enterprise that had no flavour of mystery, and was
wont to invest his most commonplace undertakings with a romantic
significance. For the time being he was a wronged aboriginal king