“Does he still do any printing?” asked Nellie, archly.

“Oh, the printing,” answered Sim, laughing again.  “He initiated me into the art of wood-engraving.  You see, Mr. Hawkins”—­turning to Ned—­ “Jones hasn’t got any type, and of course he can’t afford to buy it, but he’s got hold of a little second-hand toy printing press.  To print from he takes a piece, of wood, cut across the grain and rubbed smooth with sand, and cuts out of it the most revolutionary and blood-curdling leaflets, letter by letter.  If you only have patience it’s quite easy after a few weeks’ practice.”

“Does he print them?” asked Ned

“Print them!  I should say he did.  Every old scrap of paper he can collect or got sent him he prints his leaflets on and gets them distributed all over the country.  Many a night I’ve sat up assisting with the pottering little press.  Talk about Nihilism!  Jones vows that there is only one way to cure things and that is to destroy the rule of Force.”

“He’s along while starting,” remarked Nellie with a slight sneer.  “Those people who talk so much never do anything.”

“Oh, Jones isn’t like that,” answered Sim, with cheerful confidence.  “He’ll do anything that he thinks is worth while.  But I suppose I’m horrifying you, Mr. Hawkins?  Miss Lawton here knows what we are and is accustomed to our talk.”

“It’ll take considerable to horrify me,” replied Ned, standing down as Nellie straightened herself out for a move-on.  “You can blow the whole world to pieces for all I care.  There’s not much worth watching in it as far as I can see.”

“You’re pretty well an anarchist,” said the brown-bearded trotter-seller, his kindly intellectual face lighted up.  “It’ll come some day, that’s one satisfaction.  Do you think that many here will regret it?” He waved his hand to include the crowd that moved to and fro before them, its voices covered with the din of its dragging feet.

“That’ll do, Sim!” said Nellie.  “Don’t stuff Ned’s head with those absurd anarchisticall night-mares of yours.  We’re going; we’ve got somewhere to go.  Good-bye!  Tell Jones you saw me when you write, and remember me to him, will you?  I like him—­he’s so good-hearted, though he does rave.”

“He’s as good-hearted a man as there is in New South Wales,” corroborated Sim, shaking hands.  “I’m expecting to meet a friend—­here or I’d stroll along.  Good-bye!  Glad to have met you, Mr. Hawkins.”

He re-mounted the stall again as they moved off.  In another minute he was lost to their sight as they were swallowed up once more in the living tide that ebbed and flowed through Paddy’s Market.

After that Ned did not notice much, so absorbed was he.  He vaguely knew that they drifted along another arcade and then crossed a street to an open cobble-paved space where there were shooting-tunnels and merry-go-rounds and try-your-weights and see-how-much-you-lifts.  He looked dazedly at wizen-faced lads who gathered round ice-cream stalls, and at hungry folks who ate stewed peas.  Everything seemed grimy and frayed and sordid; the flaring torches smelt of oil; those who shot, or ate, or rode, by spending a penny, were the envied of standers-by.  Amid all this drumming and hawking and flaring of lights were swarms of boys and growing girls, precocious and vicious and foul-tongued.