h, Ford signs himself----." Geisner mentioned another signature.

"Is he the one who draws in the Scrutineer?" demanded Ned more astonished
than ever.

"Yes; you know his work?"

"Know his work! Had not every man in Australia laughed with his pitiless
cartoons at the dignified magnates of Society and the utter rottenness of
the powers that be?"

"And what is Mr. Stratton?"

"A designer for a livelihood. An artist for love of Art. His wife is
connected with the press. You wouldn't know her signature, but some of
her work is very fine. George there is a journalist."

"But I thought the newspapers were against unions."

"Naturally they are. They are simply business enterprises, conducted in
the ordinary commercial way for a profit, and therefore opposed to
everything which threatens to interfere with profit-making. But the men
and women who work on the press are very different. They are really
wage-workers to begin with. Besides, they are often intelligent enough to
sympathise thoroughly with the Labour movement in spite of the
surroundings which tend to separate them from it. Certainly, the most
popular exponents of Socialism are nearly all press writers."

"We are only just beginning to hear about these things in the bush," said
Ned. "What is Socialism?"

"That's a big question," answered Geisner. "Socialism is----"

He was interrupted. "Silence, everybody!" cried Mrs. Stratton. "Listen to
Arty's latest!"

CHAPTER VIII.

THE POET AND THE PRESSMAN.

"Silence, everybody!" commanded Mrs. Stratton. "Listen to Arty's latest!"

She had gone up to him as they all came in. "Is it good?" she asked,
looking over his arm. For answer he held the slips down to her and
changed them as she read rapidly, only pausing occasionally to ask him
what a more than usually obscured word was. There was hardly a line as
originally written. Some words had been altered three and four times.
Whole lines had been struck out and fresh lines inserted. In some verses
nothing was left of the original but the measure and the rhymes.

"No wonder you were worrying if you had all this on your mind," she
remarked, as he finished, smiling at him. "Let me read it to them."

He nodded. So when the buzz of conversation had stopped she read his
verses to the others, holding his arm in the middle of the room, her
sweet voice conveying their spirit as well as their words. And Arty stood
by her, jubilant, listening proudly and happily to the