Dick read the letter slowly; it was a very artful letter, most pathetic, and sprinkled with drops which might have been tears.  The writer spoke despondingly of her loneliness and her desolation, and the fears she endured when by herself in the house at night, knowing there was a camp of blacks in the corner paddock, and so many rough cattlemen about.  She was entirely helpless since her only protector had deserted her, and she supposed that it only remained for her to be resigned to her fate.  She signed her self, ‘Your forsaken and sorrow-stricken mother.’

When Dick had finished reading he started to put on his clothes.

‘What’s up, Morgan?’ asked Phil.

‘Knock off!’ was the brief reply.

‘But what yer goin’ to do?’

‘I’m goin’ home.’

‘Home!’ cried Peterson.  ‘Why?’

‘Because!’

Dick had the instincts of a leader; he demanded reasons for everything, but gave none.

Before the lads parted that night young Haddon proffered Ted McKnight excellent advice.

‘Your dad’s night shift, ain’t he?’ he said.  ’Well, don’t you go in till near twelve.  He’ll be gone to work then, an’ when he comes off in the mornin’ he’ll be too tired to lick you much.’  This, from an orphan with practically no experience of paternal rule, argued a fine intuition.

CHAPTER V.

Dick Haddon did not enter his home immediately after parting with his mates.  Mrs. Haddon’s little cottage, four roomed, with a queer skillion front, was surrounded by a tumbled mass of tangled vegetation miscalled a garden, and Dick loitered in the shadow of the back fence to consider what manner of entrance would be most politic.  He was shrewdly aware that his mother might be tempted to make an attack on the impulse of the moment, her most pathetic letter notwithstanding, and it was a point of honour with him to offer no resistance and make no evasion when Mrs. Haddon felt called upon to administer corporal punishment.  To be sure the maternal beatings occasioned very little physical inconvenience; but they gave rise to much unpleasantness, and were to be avoided when possible.

As it happened, Dick was not put to the necessity of making a choice to-night.  In the midst of his cogitations he felt himself seized from behind in a pair of long, strong arms.  With the quick instinct of a wrongdoer he suspected evil, and kicked sharply back ward at the shins of the enemy.

‘Le’ go!  You le’ me go, see!’ gasped the boy, struggling and fighting fiercely.

Resistance was quite useless.  Dick was dragged through the gate, and up to the house.  The door was opened, and he was bundled unceremoniously into the kitchen.  Then Ephraim Shine—­for it was the superintendent who had fallen upon Dick in the darkness—­thrust his sparsely-whiskered, leathery face into the well-lighted room, and said shortly: