that he intended to ask you to resign in favour of 'the Talkers,' as some call the committee. 'He's nowt but a squatter and a capitalist,'" he concluded.
"My thanks for renouncing a fortune," said Larry, bitterly. "Well, I've done the best I could, for the old man's sake, and if he finds chaos when he returns, I can't help it."
"The great bulk of them are loyal," replied Tom; "but that Malduke is ever sowing dissension, and, as I always told you, these fellows are suspicious to a degree. Brown says it's not their fault—goodness knows! That it's all owing to the system in which they have been brought up."
The next evening Larry had a bad hour with the men. Bastion especially, urged on by Malduke, was decidedly plain-spoken.
"What did O'Lochlan care for them, I'd like to know? Who ever took up a job such as he had nobbled for any one's good but his own?"
Save for the influence of Brown, who poured oil on the troubled waters, and of the better men, a painful scene would have been enacted.
Larry kept his temper admirably. All his old squatter instincts prompted him to go down and strike the man as he jeered amongst his comrades. The sense, however, that he was holding the position for another, restrained him. The task imposed of fighting a hard battle almost alone, had brought out all the better elements of his character. The rollicking, dare-devil young squatter had settled into a self-ruling, painstaking toiler for others.
Though touched to the quick, stung by the deadly bite of ingratitude, he that night smoked his pipe in seeming cheerfulness, and, owing to her delicate state of
