away--the boy's only chaffing you," Tap
put in.

Slaughter stood by the doorway, looking from one to the other.

"I'll know more than that," he said. "If any man says aught of me
combined with a woman's name, he's got me to deal with, and smart too."

"Well, go to the township, you fool, and ask what's said," Barber
exclaimed.

Dickson, scenting trouble for himself if Slaughter did anything of the
kind, tried to remedy the unexpected development of his remarks.

"It's only borak," he repeated. "I was chaffing. I didn't mean anything.
I thought you liked a joke. It's all right."

Barber laughed at this sudden change of front, for prior to Slaughter's
appearance Dickson had been telling, with great glee, how he had put on
to Slaughter's shoulders the reputation of his own iniquity. He had told
the story with the air of one who knew that he had done something which
would earn the admiration of his listeners; with the air of one who,
mean and cowardly himself, regarded his companions as being similarly
constituted. It was the suggestion of implied meanness that rankled with
Barber, and made him interpose upon Dickson's efforts to beat a hasty
retreat.

"It's a girl at the station, you fool," he said. "The youngster
said----"

"Silence!" Slaughter shouted, as he advanced a step into the hut and
faced the black-browed man, with the gleam in his eyes which had held
the men of Birralong back, and his fists clenched. "You bandy her name,
and----"

"Well, what then?" Barber interrupted.

"You'll deal with me," Slaughter added, facing the other, and meeting
his eyes in as steady and as hard a glance as was given.

The other two occupants of the hut stood silent, watching--Tap from
under his eyebrows, askance; Dickson, with a face that was growing pale
and eyes that were shifty and timid. Barber and Slaughter faced each
other, the one with a heavy, sullen look, the other with a gleam of
fierce anger in his eyes--just as he had looked at Marmot and his
comrades when they essayed to follow him into the schoolmaster's
cottage. Barber, through his growing rage, realized that he had a
different man to deal with than the ordinary run; he remembered also
that to quarrel with Slaughter at the moment would be dangerous to the
scheme he was working. He allowed his eyes to go down before the steady
stare that faced him.

"No one wants to harm her," he said sullenly; and both Tap and Dickson
looked up at Slaughter with a moment