ut of
it because I didn't agree with it. Besides----"

"Besides what?"

"I believe in Fate somehow. Not as anything outside bossing us, you know,
but as the whole heap of causes and conditions, of which we're a part
ourselves. But I don't feel that there'll be any real trouble though some
of us'll get into trouble just the same."

"The Government will pick the big thistles, you mean."

"Those they think the big thistles, I suppose. Of course the Government
is only the squatters and the companies in another shape and they only
want to break down the strike and are glad of any excuse that'll give
them a slant at us. They have a silly idiotic notion that only a few men
keep the unions going and that if they can get hold of a dozen or two the
others will all go to work like lambs just as the squatter wants The
fellows here have heard that the Government's getting ready to make a lot
of arrests up there. I'm one."

Nellie squeezed his arm again; "I've heard that. I suppose they can do
anything they like, Ned, but surely they won't dare to really enforce
that old George the Fourth law they've resurrected?"

"Why not? They'll do anything, Nellie. They're frantic and think they
must or the movement will flood them out. They'd like nothing better than
a chance to shoot a mob of us down like wild turkeys. They have squatter
magistrates and squatter judges--you know we've got some daisies up in
Queensland--and they'll snap up all the best lawyers and pack the jury
with a lot of shopkeepers who're just in a panic at the newspaper yarns.
The worst interpretation'll be put on everything and every foolish word
be magnified a thousand times. I know the gentry too well. They'll have
us sure as fate and all I hope is that the boys won't be foolish enough
to give them an excuse to massacre a few hundred. It'll be two or three
years apiece, the Trades Hall people have heard. However, I suppose we
can stand it. I don't care so long as the chaps stick to the union."

"Do you think they will?" asked Nellie, after another pause.

"I'm sure they will. They can rake a hundred of us in for life and knock
the union endways and in a year there'll be as much fight in the boys as
there is now, and more bitter, too. Why they're raising money in Sydney
for us already and I'm told that it was squeezed as dry as a bone over
the maritime strike. The New South Wales fellows are all true blue and so
they are down Adelaide way, as good as gold yet. T