Jacker was elated, and grinned far and wide.

‘P’raps he’ll go nippin’ round, thinkin’ he’s chased by ’em like he did las’ Christmas holidays,’ suggested the elder McKnight gleefully.

This villainous scheme was the result of the boys’ extraordinary familiarity with many phases of drunkenness.  Waddy was a pastoral as well as a mining centre, and strange ribald men came out of the bush at intervals to ‘melt’ their savings at the Drovers’ Arms.  The Yarraman sale-yards for cattle and sheep were near Waddy too, and brought dusty drovers and droughty stockmen in crowds to the town ship every Tuesday.  These men were indiscreet and indiscriminate drinkers, and often a vagrant was left behind to finish a spree that surrounded him with unheard-of reptiles and strange kaleidoscopic animals unknown to the zoologist.  It must be admitted, too, that Joel Ham, B.A., was in a measure responsible for the boys’ unlawful knowledge.  Twice at holiday times, when he was not restricted at the Drovers’ Arms, he had continued his libations until it was necessary for his own good and the peace of the place to tie him down in his bunk and set a guard over him; and on one of these occasions he had created much excitement by rushing through the township at midnight, scantily clad, under the impression that he was being pursued by a tall dark gentleman in a red cloak and possessed of both horns and hoofs.

It was nearly nine o’clock that night when the four conspirators met to carry out their nefarious project.  Dick was carrying a bag—­in which was the joey—­a bull’s-eye lantern, various coloured feathers, and other small necessaries, and the party hastened in the direction of Mr. Ham’s humble residence.  Ham was ’a hatter’—­he lived alone in a secluded place on the other side of the quarries.  The house was large for Waddy, and had once been a boarding-house, but was now little better than a ruin.  The schoolmaster had reclaimed one room, furnished it much like a miner’s but, with the addition of a long shelf of tattered books, and here he ‘batched,’ perfectly contented with his lot for all that Waddy could ever discover to the contrary.  There was no other house within a quarter of a mile of the ruin, which was hemmed in with four rows of wattles, and surrounded by a wilderness of dead fruit-trees—­victims to the ravages of the goats of the township—­and a tangled scrub of Cape broom.  The boys approached the house with quite unnecessary caution, keeping along the string of dry quarry-holes, and creeping towards the back door through the thick growth as warily as so many Indians on the trail.  Dick Haddon cared nothing for an enterprise that had no flavour of mystery, and was wont to invest his most commonplace undertakings with a romantic significance.  For the time being he was a wronged aboriginal king, leading the remnants of his tribe to wreak a deadly vengeance on the white usurper.  A short conference was held in the garden.