jump."

"Why afraid?" enquired Nellie, biting her lips.

"Because it has no chance," answered Ned. "These are all newspaper lies
about them having arms and such nonsense. There aren't 500 guns in the
whole Western country and half of them are old muzzle-loading shot guns.
The kangarooers have got good rifles but nineteen men out of twenty no
more carry one than they carry a house."

"But the papers say they're getting them!"

"Where are they to get them from, supposing they want them and naturally
the chaps want them when they hear of military coming to 'shoot 'em
down'? You can reckon that the Government isn't letting any be carried on
the railways and, even if they did I don't believe you could buy 500
rifles in all Queensland at any one time."

"Then it's all make-up that's in the papers? It certainly seemed to me
that there was something in it."

"That's just it, there is something in it. Just enough, I'm convinced, to
give the Government an excuse for doing what they did during the maritime
strike without any excuse and what the squatters have been planning for
them to do all along."

"One of the Queensland men who was here a week or two ago was telling me
about the maritime strike business. It was the first I'd heard of that.
Griffith didn't seem to be that way years ago," said Nellie.

"Griffith is a fraud," declared Ned, hotly. "I'd sooner have one of the
Pure Merinoes than Griffith. They do fight us out straight and fair,
anyway, and don't cant much about knowing that things aren't right, with
Elementary Property Bills and 'Wealth and Want' and that sort of wordy
tommy-rot. I like to know where to find a man and that trick of Griffith
at the maritime strike in Brisbane showed where to find him right
enough."

"Was it Griffith?" asked Nellie.

"Of course it was Griffith. Who else would it be? The fellows in Brisbane
feel sore over it, I tell you. When they'd been staying up nights and
getting sick and preaching themselves hoarse, talking law and order to
the chaps on strike and rounding on every man who even boo'd as though he
were a blackleg, and when the streets were quieter with thousands of
rough fellows about than they were ordinary times, those shop-keepers and
wool-dealers and commission agents went off their heads and got the
Government to swear in 'specials' and order out mounted troopers and
serve out ball cartridges. And all the time the police said it wasn't
necessary, that the men on str