“You haven’t got any thing against anybody here, I should think?” said Joe.

“If you want to get them as begun it,” said Jack, “and them as ought to be took up, you’ll go to Gangoil.”

“Hold your tongue, Jack,” said his brother.  “Sergeant Forrest knows where to go better than you can tell him.”

Then the sergeant asked a string of questions as to the nature of the fight; who had been hurt; and how badly had any body been hurt; and what other harm had been done.  The answers to all these questions were given with a fair amount of truth, except that the little circumstance of the origin of the fire was not explained.  Both Boscobel and Joe had seen the torch put down, but it could hardly have been expected that they should have been explicit as to such a detail as that.  Nor did they mention the names of either their brother George or Nokes.

“And who was there in the matter?” asked the sergeant.

“There was young Heathcote, and a boy he has got there, and the two chaps as he calls boundary rulers, and Medlicot, the sugar fellow from the mill, and a chap of Medlicot’s I never set eyes on before.  They must have expected something to be up, or Heathcote would not have been going about at night with a tribe of men like that.”

“And who were your party?”

“Well, there were just ourselves, four of us, for Georgie was here, and this fellow Boscobel.  Georgie never stays long, and he wouldn’t be welcome if he did.  He turned up just by chance like, and now he’s off again.”

“That was all, eh?”

Of course they all knew that the sergeant knew that Nokes had been with them.  “Well, then, that wasn’t all,” said old Brownbie.  “Bill Nokes was here, whom Heathcote dismissed ever so long ago, and that Chinese cook of his.  He dismissed him too, I suppose.  And he dismissed Boscobel here.”

“No one can live at Gangoil any time,” said Jack.  “Every body knows that.  He wants to be lord a’mighty over every thing.  But he ain’t going to be lord a’mighty at Boolabong.”

“And he ain’t going to burn our grass either,” said Joe.  “It’s like his impudence coming on to our ran and burning every thing before him.  He calls hisself a magistrate, but he’s not to do just as he pleases because he’s a magistrate.  I suppose we can swear against him for lighting our grass, sergeant?  There isn’t one of us that didn’t see him do it.”

“And where is Nokes?” asked the sergeant, paying no attention to the application made by Mr. Brownbie, junior, for redress to himself.

“Well,” said Joe, “Nokes isn’t any where about Boolabong.”

“He’s away with your brother George?”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” said Joe.

“It’s a serious matter lighting a fire, you know,” said the sergeant.  “A man would have to swing for it.”

“Then why isn’t young Heathcote to swing?” demanded Jack.

“There is such a thing as intent, you know.  When Heathcote lighted the fire, where would the fire have gone if he hadn’t kept putting it out as fast as he kept lighting it?  On to his own run, not to yours.  And where would the other fire have gone which somebody lit, and which nobody put out, if he hadn’t been there to stop it?  The less you say against Heathcote the better.  So Nokes is off, is he?”