“But if there is trouble, Ned?” she persisted.  “Supposing it does start?”

“I shall go with the chaps, of course, if that’s what you mean.”

“Knowing it’s useless, just to throw your life away?” she asked, quietly, not protestingly, but as one seeking information.

“I’ve eaten their bread,” answered Ned.  “Whatever mad thing is done, however it’s done, I’m with them.  I should be a coward if I stood out 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.  The bosses don’t know what a job they tackled when they started in to down unionism.  They fancy that if they can only smash our fellows they’ll have unionism smashed all over Australia.  The fun will only just have started then.”