“I’ve often wondered where you got your power from, Ford,” remarked Connie.  “I see now.”

“Yes, that great wall made me hate the great wall that bars the people from all beautiful things; that fat hypocrite made me hate all frauds.  I can never forget the way we all swallowed those things as sacred.  When I get going with a pencil I feel towards whatever it is just as I felt to the parson, and I try to make everybody feel the same.  Yet would you believe it, I don’t care much for cartooning.  I want to paint.”

“Why don’t you?” asked Nellie.

“Well, there’s money you know.  Then it was sheer luck that made me a cartoonist and I can’t expect the same run of luck always.”

“Don’t believe him, Nellie,” said Connie.  “He feels that he has a chance now to give all frauds such a hammering that he hesitates to give it up.  You’ve paid the parson, Ford, full measure, pressed down and running over!”

“Not enough!” answered Ford.  “Not enough!  Not till the wall is down flat all the world over!  Do you think Egypt would have lasted 20,000 years if her priests had been like my parson, and her slaves like my people?”

“I’d forgotten all about Egypt,” said Nellie.  “But I suppose her rulers had sense enough to give men enough to eat and enough to drink, high wages and constant employment, as M’Ilwraith used to say.  Yes; it was wiser than the rulers of to-day are.  You can rob for a long while if you only rob moderately.  But the end comes some time to all wrong.  It’s coming faster with us, but it came in Egypt, too.”

“Here is Arty, finished!” interrupted Connie, who every little while had looked through the door at the young man.  She jumped up.  “Come along in and see what it is this time.”

They all went in, jostling and joking one another.  Arty was standing up in the middle of the room looking at some much blotted slips of paper.  He appeared to be very well satisfied, and broke into a broad smile as he looked up at them all.  Geisner and Ned found themselves side by side near the piano, over the keys of which Geisner softly ran his fingers with loving touch.  “You are in luck to-night,” he remarked to Ned.  “You know Arty’s signature, of course.  He writes as——­,” mentioning a well-known name.

“Of course I know.  Is that him?” answered Ned, astonished.  “Verses which bore that signature were as familiar to thousands of western bushmen as their own names.  Who is Ford?” he added.

“Ford!  Oh, Ford signs himself——.”  Geisner mentioned another signature.

“Is he the one who draws in the Scrutineer?” demanded Ned more astonished than ever.

“Yes; you know his work?”

“Know his work!  Had not every man in Australia laughed with his pitiless cartoons at the dignified magnates of Society and the utter rottenness of the powers that be?”

“And what is Mr. Stratton?”

“A designer for a livelihood.  An artist for love of Art.  His wife is connected with the press.  You wouldn’t know her signature, but some of her work is very fine.  George there is a journalist.”