“That matter might be settled, I think,” said Strong, dismissing it.  “What other objections have you to the agreement?”

“As an agreement I object to the whole thing, the way it’s being worked.  If it were a proposal I should want to know how about the Eight Hours and the Chinese.”

“We don’t wish to alter existing hours,” answered Strong.

“Then why not put it down?”

“And we don’t wish to encourage aliens.”

“A good many pastoralists do and we are determined to try to stop them.  It looks queer to us that nothing is said about it.”

“Some certainly did urge that Chinese should be allowed in tropical Queensland but our influence is against that and we hope to restrain the more impetuous and thus prevent friction.”

Ned shrugged his shoulders without answering.

“We hope—­” began Strong.  Then he broke off, saying instead:  “I do not see why the men should regard the pastoralists as necessarily inimical and as not desirous of doing what is fair.”

“Look here, Mr. Strong,” said Ned leaning forward, as was his habit when in earnest.  “We are beginning to understand things.  We know that you people are after profits and nothing else, that to you we are like so many horses or sheep, only not so valuable because we’re harder to break in and our carcasses aren’t worth anything.  We know that you don’t care a curse whether we live or die and that you’d fill the bush with Chinese to-morrow if you could see your way to making an extra one per cent. by it.”

“You haven’t much confidence in us, at any rate,” returned Strong, coolly.  “But if we look carefully after profits you must recollect that a great deal of capital is trust funds.  The widow and the orphan invest their little fortunes in our hands.  Surely you wouldn’t injure them?”

“I thought we were talking straight to one another,” said Ned.  “You will excuse me, Mr. Strong, for thinking that to talk ‘widow and orphan’ isn’t worthy of a man like you unless you’ve got a very small opinion of me.  When you think about our widows and orphans we’ll think about your widows and orphans.  That’s only clap-trap.  It doesn’t alter the hard fact that you’re only after profit and don’t care what happens to us so long as you get it.”

The financier bit his lips, flushing.  He took up a letter and glanced over it before replying.

“Do you care what happens to us?”

“As things are, no.  How can we?  The worst that could happen to one of you would leave you as well off as the most fortunate of us.  There is war between us, only I think it possible to be a little civilised and not to fight each other like savages as we are doing.”

“I am glad you admit that some of your methods are savage.”

“Of course I admit it,” answered Ned.  “That is my opinion of the way both sides fight now.  Instead of conferring and arbitrating on immediate questions and leaving future questions to be talked over and understood and thoroughly threshed out in free discussion, we strike, you lockout, you victimise wholesale and, naturally, we retaliate in our own ways.”