ring. Ned saw him wave
his hand and walk away with the portmanteau. The train sped on, past
sheds and side-tracked carriages, past steaming engines and switch-houses
and great banked stacks of coal, out over the bridge into the open
country beyond, speeding ever Queenslandwards.

Ned, leaning over the window, watched the sheen of the electric lights on
the wharves, watched the shimmering of the river, watched the glower that
hung over the city as if over a great bush fire, watched the glorious
cloudless star-strewn sky and the splendid moon that lit the opening
country as it had lit the water front of Sydney last night, as it would
light for him the backtracks of the mazy bush when he forced his horses
on, from camp to camp, six score miles and more a day. It was a
traveller's moon, he thought with joy; let him once get into the saddle
with relays ahead and let the rain hold off for four or five days more,
then they could arrest him if they liked; at least he would have got back
to his mates.

Newcastle faded away. He took his precious photo out again and held it in
his hand after studying its outlines for the hundredth time; unobserved
he pressed the red rose to his lips.

His heart filled with joy as he listened to the rumbling of the wheels,
to the puffing of the engine, to the rubble-double-double of the train.
Every mile it covered was a mile northward; every hour was a good day's
journeying; every post it flew by was a post the less to pass of the
hundred-thousand that lay between him and his goal. He would get back
somehow. Where "the chaps" were he would be, whatever happened. And when
he got back he could tell them, at least, that the South would pour its
willing levies to help them fight in Queensland the common enemy of all.
It never struck him that he was getting further and further from Nellie.
In his innermost soul he knew that he was travelling to her.

What good fellows they were down South here, he thought, with a gush of
feeling. Wherever he went there were friends, cheering him, watching over
him, caring for him, their purses open to him, because he was a
Queensland bushman and because his union was in sore trouble and because
they would not see brother unionists fall into a trap and perish there
unaided. From the Barrier to Newcastle the brave miners, veterans of the
Labour war, were standing by. In Adelaide and Sydney alike the town
unions were voting aid and sympathy. The southern bushmen, threa