Stratton took his cigar from his mouth and quoted:

"'I am the breath of the lute, I am the mind of man, Gold's glitter, the light of the diamond and the sea-pearl's lustre wan. I am both good and evil, the deed and the deed's intent—Temptation, victim, sinner, crime, pardon and punishment.'"

"Yes," said Geisner; "that and more. Brahma and more than Brahma. What Prince Buddha thought out too. What Jesus the Carpenter dimly recognised. Not only Force, but Purpose, or what for lack of better terms we call Purpose, in it all."

"And that Purpose; what is it?" Ned was surprised to hear his own voice uttering his thought.

"Who shall say? There are moments, a few moments, when one seems to feel what it is, moments when one stands face to face with the universal Life and realises wordlessly what it means." Geisner spoke with grave solemnity. The others, hardly breathing, understood how this man had thought these things out.

"When one is in anguish and sorrow unendurable. When one has seen one's soul stripped naked and laid bare, with all its black abysses and unnatural sins; the brutishness that is in each man's heart known and understood—the cowardice, the treachery, the villainy, the lust. When one knows oneself in others, and sinks into a mist of despair, hopeless and heart-wrung, then come the temptations, as the prophets call them, the miserable ambitions dressed as angels of light, the religions which have become more drugged pain-lullers, the desire to suppress thought altogether, to end life, to stupefy one's soul with bodily pain, with mental activity. And if," he added slowly, "if one's pain is for others more than for oneself, if in one's heart Humanity has lodged itself, then it may be that one shall feel and know. And from that time you never doubt God. You may doubt yourself but never that all things work together for good."

"I do not see it," cried Nellie.

"Hush!" said Connie. "Go on, Geisner."

"To me," the little man went on, as if talking rather to himself than to the others. "To me the Purpose of Life is self-consciousness, the total Purpose I mean. God seeking to know God. Eternal Force one immeasurable Thought. Humanity the developing consciousness of the little fragment of the universe within our ken. Art, the expression of that consciousness, the outward manifestation of the effort to solve the problem of Life. Genius, the power of expressing in some way or other what many thought but could not articulate. I do not mean to be dogmatic. Words fail us to define our meaning when we speak of these things. Any quibbler can twist the meaning of words, while only those who think the thought can understand. That is why one does not speak much of them. Perhaps we should speak of them more."

"It is a barren faith to me," said Nellie.

"Then I do not express it well," said Geisner. "But is it more barren-sounding than utter Negation? Besides, where do we differ really? All of us who think at all agree more or less. We use different terms, pursue different lines of thought, that is all. It is only the dullard, who mistakes the symbol for the idea, the letter for the spirit, the metaphor for the thought within, who is a bigot. The true thinker is an artist, the true artist is a thinker, for Art is the expression of thought in thing. The highest thought, as Connie rightly told us before you came, is Emotion."

"I recollect the Venus in the Louvre," interjected Harry. "When I saw it first it seemed to me most beautiful, perfect, the loveliest thing that ever sculptor put chisel to. But as I saw it more I forgot that it was beautiful or perfect. It grew on me till it lived. I went day after day to see it, and when I was glad it laughed at me, and when I was downhearted it was sad with me, and when I was angry it scowled, and when I dreamed of Love it had a kiss on its lips. Every mood of mine it changed with; every thought of mine it knew. Was not that Art, Nellie?"

"The artist in you," she answered.

"No. More than that. The artist in the sculptor, breathing into the stone a perfect sympathy with the heart of men. His genius grasped this, that beauty, perfect beauty, is the typifying not of one passion, one phase of human nature, but of the aggregation of all the moods which sway the human mind. There is a great thought in that. It is 'the healthy mind in the healthy body,' as the sculptor feels it. And 'the healthy mind in the healthy body' is one of the great thoughts of the past. It is a thought which is the priceless gift of Greek philosophy to the world. I hold it higher than that of the Sphinx, which Ford admires so."

"What does the Sphinx mean?" asked Ned.

"Much the same, differently expressed," answered Ford. "That Life with us is an intellectual head based on a brutish body, fecund and powerful; that Human Nature crouches on the ground and reads the stars; that man has a body and a mind, and that both must be cared for."

"They had a strange way of caring for both, your Egyptians," remarked Nellie. "The people were all slaves and the rulers were all priests."

At this criticism, so naive and pithy and so like Nellie, there was a general laugh.

"At least the priests were wise and the slaves were cared for," retorted Ford, nothing abashed. "I recollect when I was a little fellow in England. My people were farm labourers, west of England labourers. We lived in a little stone cottage that had little diamond-paned windows. The kitchen floor was below the ground, and on wet days my mother used to make a little dam of rags at the door to keep the trickling water back. We lived on bread and potatoes and broad beans, and not too much of that. We got a little pig for half-a-crown, and killed it when it was grown to pay the rent. Don't think such things are only done in Ireland! We herded together like pigs ourselves. The women of the place often worked in the fields. The girls, too, sometimes. You know what that means where the people are like beasts, the spirit worn out of them. The cottages were built two together, and our neighbour's daughter, a girl of 18 or so, had two children. It was not thought anything. The little things played at home with our neighbour's own small children, and their grandmother called them hard names when they bothered her.

"My father was a bent-shouldered hopeless man, when I recollect him. He got six shillings a week then, with a jug of cider every day. When he stopped from the wet, and there was no work in the barns, his wages were stopped. So he worked in the wet very often, for it generally rains in England, you know. The wet came through our roof. Gives the natives such pretty pink skins, eh, Geisner?" and he laughed shortly. "My father got rheumatism, and used to keep us awake groaning at nights. He had been a good-looking young fellow, my old granny used to say. I never saw him good-looking. In the winter we always had poor relief. We should have starved if we hadn't. My father got up at four and came home after dark. My mother used to go weeding and gleaning. I went to scare crows when I was five years old. All the same, we were a family of paupers. Proud to be an Englishman, Geisner! Be an English pauper, and then try!"

"You'll never get to the priests, Ford, if you start an argument," interposed Mrs. Stratton.

"I'll get to them all right. Our cottage was down a narrow, muddy lane. On one side of the lane was a row of miserable stone hovels, just like ours. On the other was a great stone wall that seemed to me, then, to be about a hundred feet high. I suppose it was about twenty feet. You could just see the tops of trees the other side. Some had branches lopped short to prevent them coming over the wall. At the corner of the highway our lane ran to was a great iron gate, all about it towering trees, directly inside a mound of shrub-covered rockery that prevented anybody getting a peep further. The carriage drive took a turn round this rockery and disappeared. Once, when the gate was open and nobody about, I got a peep by sneaking round this rockery like a little thief. There was a beautiful lawn and clumps of flowers, and a summer house and a conservatory, and a big grey-fronted mansion. I thought heaven must be something like that. It made me radical."

"How do you mean?" asked Mrs. Stratton.

"Well, it knocked respect for constituted authority out of me. I didn't know enough to understand the wrong of one lazy idler having this splendid place while the people he lived on kennelled in hovels. But it struck me as so villainously selfish to build that wall, to prevent us outside from even looking at the beautiful lawn and flowers. I was only a little chap but I recollect wondering if it would hurt the place to let me look, and when I couldn't see that it would I began to hate the wall like poison. There we were, poor, ragged, hungry wretches, without anything beautiful in our lives, so miserable and hopeless that I didn't even know it wasn't the right thing to be a pauper, and that animal ran up a great wall in our faces so that we couldn't see the grass—curse him!" Ford had gradually worked himself into a white rage.

"He didn't know any better," said Geisner. "Was he the priest?"

"Yes, the rector, getting L900 a-year and this great house, and paying a skinny curate L60 for doing the work. A fat impostor, who drove about in a carriage, and came to tell the girl next door as she lay a-bed that she would go to hell for her sin and burn there for ever. I hated his wall and him too. Out in the fields I used to draw him on bits of slate. In the winter when there weren't any crows or any weeding I went to school. You see, unless you sent your children to the church school a little, and went to church regularly, you didn't get any beef or blanket at Christmas. I tell you English charity is a sweet thing. Well, I used to draw the parson at school, a fat, pompous, double chinned, pot-bellied animal, with thin side-whiskers, and a tall silk hat, and a big handful of a nose. I drew nothing else. I studied the question as it were and I got so that I could draw the brute in a hundred different ways. You can imagine they weren't complimentary, and one day the parson came to the school, and we stood up in class with slates to do sums, and on the back of my slate was one of the very strongest of my first attempts at cartooning. It was a hot one." And at the remembrance Ford laughed so contagiously that they all joined. "The parson happened to see it. By gum! It was worth everything to see him."

"What did he do?"

"What didn't he do? He delivered a lecture, how I was a worthy relative of an uncle of mine who'd been shipped out this way years before for snaring a rabbit, and so on. I got nearly skinned alive, and the Christmas beef and blanket wore stopped from our folks. And there another joke comes in. An older brother of mine, 14 years old, I was about 12, took to going to the Ranters' meetings instead of to church. My mother and father used to tie him up on Saturday nights and march him to church on Sunday like a young criminal going to gaol. They were afraid of losing the beef and blanket, you see. He sometimes ran out of church when they nodded or weren't looking, and the curate was always worrying them about him. It was the deadliest of all sins, you know, to go to the Ranters. Well, when the beef and blanket were stopped, without any chance of forgiveness, we all went to the Ranters."

"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."

"But I thought the newspapers were against unions."

"Naturally they are. They are simply business enterprises, conducted in the ordinary commercial way for a profit, and therefore opposed to everything which threatens to interfere with profit-making. But the men and women who work on the press are very different. They are really wage-workers to begin with. Besides, they are often intelligent enough to sympathise thoroughly with the Labour movement in spite of the surroundings which tend to separate them from it. Certainly, the most popular exponents of Socialism are nearly all press writers."

"We are only just beginning to hear about these things in the bush," said Ned. "What is Socialism?"

"That's a big question," answered Geisner. "Socialism is——"

He was interrupted. "Silence, everybody!" cried Mrs. Stratton. "Listen to Arty's latest!"



CHAPTER VIII.

THE POET AND THE PRESSMAN.

"Silence, everybody!" commanded Mrs. Stratton. "Listen to Arty's latest!"

She had gone up to him as they all came in. "Is it good?" she asked, looking over his arm. For answer he held the slips down to her and changed them as she read rapidly, only pausing occasionally to ask him what a more than usually obscured word was. There was hardly a line as originally written. Some words had been altered three and four times. Whole lines had been struck out and fresh lines inserted. In some verses nothing was left of the original but the measure and the rhymes.

"No wonder you were worrying if you had all this on your mind," she remarked, as he finished, smiling at him. "Let me read it to them."

He nodded. So when the buzz of conversation had stopped she read his verses to the others, holding his arm in the middle of the room, her sweet voice conveying their spirit as well as their words. And Arty stood by her, jubilant, listening proudly and happily to the rhythm of his new-born lines, for all the world like a young mother showing her new-born babe.

THE VISION OF LABOUR.

There's a sound of lamentation 'mid the murmuring nocturne noises, And an undertone of sadness, as from myriad human voices, And the harmony of heaven and the music of the spheres, And the ceaseless throb of Nature, and the flux and flow of years, Are rudely punctuated with the drip of human tears —As Time rolls on!

Yet high above the beat of surf, and Ocean's deep resounding, And high above the tempest roar of wind on wave rebounding, There's a burst of choral chanting, as of victors in a fight, And a battle hymn of triumph wakes the echoes of the night, And the shouts of heroes mingle with the shriekings of affright —As Time rolls on!

There's a gleam amid the darkness, and there's sight amid the blindness, And the glow of hope is kindled by the breath of human kindness, And a phosphorescent glimmer gilds the spaces of the gloom, Like the sea-lights in the midnight, or the ghost-lights of the tomb, Or the livid lamps of madness in the charnel-house of doom —As Time rolls on!

And amidst the weary wand'rers on the mountain crags belated There's a hush of expectation, and the sobbings are abated, For a word of hope is spoken by a prophet versed in pain, Who tells of rugged pathways down to fields of golden grain, Where the sun is ever shining, and the skies their blessings rain —As Time rolls on!

Where the leafy chimes of gladness in the tree-tops aye are ringing, Answering to the joyous chorus which the birds are ever singing; Where the seas of yellow plenty toss with music in the wind; Where the purple vines are laden, and the groves with fruit are lined; Where all grief is but a mem'ry, and all pain is left behind —As Time rolls on!

But it lies beyond a desert 'cross which hosts of Death are marching, And a hot sirocco wanders under skies all red and parching, Lined with skeletons of armies through the centuries fierce and acre Bones of heroes and of sages marking Time's lapse year by year, Unmoistened by the night-dews 'mid the solitudes of fear —As Time rolls on!

* Kindly written by Mr. F. J. Broomfield for insertion here.

"Well done, Arty"! cried Ford. "I'd like to do a few 'thumbnails' for that."

"Let me see it, please! Why don't you say 'rushes' for 'wanders' in the last verse, Arty?" asked George, reaching out his hand for the slips.

"Go away!" exclaimed Mrs. Stratton, holding them out of reach. "Can't you wait two minutes before you begin your sub-editing tricks? Josie, keep him in order!"

"He's a disgrace," replied Josie. "Don't pay any heed to him, Arty! They'll cut up your verses soon enough, and they're just lovely."

The others laughed, all talking at once, commending, criticising, comparing. Arty laughed and joked and quizzed, the liveliest of them all. Ned stared at him in astonishment. He seemed like somebody else. He discussed his own verses with a strange absence of egotism. Evidently he was used to standing fire.

"The metaphor in that third verse seems to me rather forced," said Stratton finally. "And I think George is right. 'Rushes' does sound better than 'wanders.' I like that 'rudely punctuated' line, but I think I'd go right through it again if it was mine."

"I think I will, too," answered Arty. "There are half-a-dozen alterations I want to make now. I'll touch it up to-morrow. It'll keep till then."

"That sort of stuff would keep for years if it wasn't for the Scrutineer," said Stratton. "Very few papers care to publish it nowadays."

"The Scrutineer is getting just like all the rest of them," commented George. "It's being run for money, only they make their pile as yet by playing to the gallery while the other papers play to the stalls and dress circle."

"It has done splendid work for the movement, just the same," said Ford. "Admit it's a business concern and that everybody growls at it, it's the only paper that dares knock things."

"It's a pity there isn't a good straight daily here," said Geisner. "That's the want all over the world. It seems impossible to get them, though."

"Why is it?" demanded Nellie. "It's the working people who buy the evening papers at least. Why shouldn't they buy straight papers sooner than these sheets of lies that are published?"

"I've seen it tried," answered Geisner, "but I never saw it done. The London Star is going as crooked as the others I'm told."

"I don't see why the unions shouldn't start dailies," insisted Nellie. "I suppose it costs a great deal but they could find the money if they tried hard."

"They haven't been able to run weeklies yet," said George, authoritatively. "And they never will until they get a system, much less run dailies."

"Why?" asked Ned. "You see," he continued, "our fellows are always talking of getting a paper. They get so wild sometimes when they read what the papers say about the unions and know what lies most of it is that I've seen them tear the papers up and dance a war-dance on the pieces."

"It's along story to explain properly," said George. "Roughly it amounts to this that papers live on advertisements as well as on circulation and that advertisers are sharp business men who generally put the boycott on papers that talk straight. Then the cable matter, the telegraph matter, the news matter, is all procured by syndicates and companies and mutual arrangement between papers which cover the big cities between them and run on much the same lines, the solid capitalistic lines, you know. Then newspaper stock, when it pays, is valuable enough to make the holder a capitalist; when it doesn't pay he's still more under the thumb of the advertisers. The whole complex organisation of the press is against the movement and only those who're in it know how complex it is."

"Then there'll never be a Labour press, you think?"

"There will be a Labour press, I think," said George, turning Josie's hair round his fingers. "When the unions get a sound system it'll come."

"What do you mean by your sound system, George?" asked Geisner.

"Just this! That the unions themselves will publish their own papers, own their own plant, elect their own editors, paying for it all by levies or subscriptions. Then they can snap their fingers at advertisers and as every union man will get the union paper there'll be a circulation established at once. They can begin with monthlies and come down to weeklies. When they have learnt thoroughly the system, and when every colony has its weekly or weeklies, then they'll have a chance for dailies, not before."

"How would you get your daily?" enquired Geisner.

"Expand the weeklies into dailies simultaneously in every Australian capital," said George, waxing enthusiastic. "That would be a syndicate at once to co-operate on cablegrams and exchange intercolonial telegrams. Start with good machinery, get a subsidy of 6d. a month for a year and 3d. a month afterwards, if necessary, from the unions for every member, and then bring out a small-sized, neat, first-rate daily for a ha'penny, three-pence a week, and knock the penny evenings off their feet."

"A grand idea!" said Geisner, his eyes sparkling. "It sounds practical. It would revolutionise politics."

"Who'd own the papers, though, after the unions had subsidised them?" asked Ned, a little suspiciously.

"Why, the unions, of course," said George. "Who else? The unions would find the machinery and subsidise the papers on to their feet, for you couldn't very well get every man to take a daily. And the unions would elect trustees to hold them and manage them and an editor to edit each one and would be able to dismiss editors or trustees either if it wasn't being run straight. There'd be no profits because every penny made would go to make the papers better, there being no advertising income or very little. And every day, all over the continent, there would be printing hundreds of thousands of copies, each one advancing and defending the Labour movement."

"It's a grand idea," said Geisner again, "but who'd man the papers, George. Could Labour papers afford to pay managers and editors what the big dailies do?"

"I don't know much about managers, but an editor who wouldn't give up a lot to push the Cause can't think much of it. Why, we're nothing but literary prostitutes," said George, energetically. "We just write now what we're told, selling our brains as women on the streets do their bodies, and some of us don't like it, some of the best too, as you know well, Geisner. My idea would be to pay a living salary, the same all round, to every man on the literary staff. That would be fair enough as an all round wage if it was low pay for editing and leader writing and fancy work. Many a good man would jump at it, to be free to write as he felt, and as for the rest of the staff by paying such a wage we'd get the tip-top pick of the ordinary men who do the pick-up work that generally isn't considered important but in my opinion is one of the main points of a newspaper."

"Would you take what you call a 'living salary' on such a paper?" asked Connie.

"I'd take half if Josie—" He looked at her with tender confidence. The love-light was in her answering eyes. She nodded, proud of him.

"And they'd all publish my poetry?" asked Arty.

"Would they? They'd jump at it."

"Then when they come along, I'll write for a year for nothing."

"How about me?" asked Ford, "Where do I come in?"

"And me?" asked Connie.

"You can all come in," laughed George. "Geisner shall do the political and get his editor ten years for sedition. Stratton will supply the mild fatherly sociological leaders. Mrs. Stratton shall prove that there can't be any true Art so long as we don't put the police on to everything that is ugly and repulsive. Nellie, here, shall blossom out as the Joan of Arc of women's rights, with a pen for a sword. And Arty we'll keep chained upon the premises and feed him with peppercorns when we want something particularly hot. Ford can retire to painting and pour his whole supply of bile out in one cartoon a week that we'll publish as a Saturday's supplement. Hawkins shall be our own correspondent who'll give the gentle squatter completely away in weekly instalments. And Josie and I'll slash the stuffing out of your 'copy' if you go writing three columns when there's only room for one. We'll boil down on our papers. Every line will be essence of extract. Don't you see how it's done already?"

"We see it," said Nellie, stifling a yawn. "The next thing is to get the unions to see it."

"That's so," retorted George, "so I'll give you my idea to do what you can with."

"We must go," said Nellie, getting up from her chair. "It must be after one and I'm tired."

"It's ten minutes to two," said Ford, having pulled out his watch.

"Why don't you stay all night, Nellie," asked Connie. "We can put Ned up, if he doesn't mind a shake-down. Then we can make a night of it. Geisner is off again on Monday or Tuesday."

"Tuesday," said Geisner, who had gone to the book-shelf again.

"Then I'll come Monday evening," said Nellie, for his tone was an invitation. "I feel like a walk, and I don't feel like talking much."

"All right," said Connie, not pressing, with true tact. "Will you come on Monday too, Ned?" she asked, moving to the door under the hangings with Nellie. Josie slipped quickly out on to the verandah with George.

"I must be off on Monday," replied Ned, regretfully. "There's a shed starts the next week, and I said I'd be up there to see that it shore union. I'm very sorry, but I really can't wait."

"I'm so sorry, too. But it can't be helped. Some other time, Ned." And nodding to him Connie went out with Nellie.

"So we shan't see you again," said Stratton, lighting a cigar at the gas. Ford had resumed his puffing at his black pipe and his seat on the table.

"Not soon at any rate," answered Ned. "I shall be in Western Queensland this time next week."

"The men are organising fast up that way, aren't they?" asked Stratton.

"They had to," said Ned. "What with the Chinese and the squatters doing as they liked and hating the sight of a white man, we'd all have been cleared out if we hadn't organised."

"Coloured labour has been the curse of Queensland all through," remarked Ford.

"I think it has made Queensland as progressive as it is, too," remarked Geisner. "It was a common danger for all the working classes, and from what I hear has given them unity of feeling earlier than that has been acquired in the south."

"Some of the old-fashioned union ideas that they have in Sydney want knocking badly," remarked Arty, smoking cheerfully.

"They'll be knocked safely enough if they want knocking," said Geisner. "There are failings in all organisation methods everywhere as well as in Sydney. New Unionism is only the Old Unionism reformed up to date. It'll need reforming itself as soon as it has done its work."

"Is the New Unionism really making its way in England, Geisner?" asked Stratton.

"I think so. A very intelligent man is working with two or three others to organise the London dock laborers on the new lines. He told me he was confident of success but didn't seem to realise all it meant. If those men can be organised and held together for a rise in wages it'll be the greatest strike that the world has seen yet. It will make New Unionism."

"Do you think it possible?" asked Ford. "I know a little about the London dockers. They are the drift of the English labour world. When a man is hopeless he goes to look for work at the docks."

"There is a chance if the move is made big enough to attract attention and if everything is prepared beforehand. If money can be found to keep a hundred thousand penniless men out while public opinion is forming they can win, I think. Even British public opinion can't yet defend fourpence an hour for casual work."

"Men will never think much until they are organised in some form or other," said Stratton. "Such a big move in London would boom the organisation of unskilled men everywhere."

"More plots!" cried Connie, coming back, followed by Nellie, waterproofed and hatted.

"It's raining," she went on, to Ned, "so I'll give you Harry's umbrella and let Ford take his waterproof. You'll have a damp row, Nellie. I suppose you know you've got to go across in George's boat, Ned."

Ned didn't know, but just then George's "Ahoy!" sounded from outside.

"We mustn't keep him waiting in the wet," exclaimed Nellie. She shook hands with them all, kissing Mrs. Stratton affectionately. Ned felt as he shook hands all round that he was leaving old friends.

"Come again," said Stratton, warmly. "We shall always be glad to see you."

"Indeed we shall," urged Connie. "Don't wait to come with Nellie. Come and see us any time you're in Sydney. Day or night, come and see if we're in and wait here if we're not."

Geisner and Stratton put on their hats and went with them down the verandah stops to the little stone quay below. Josie was standing there, in the drizzle, wrapped in a cloak and holding a lantern. In a rowing skiff, alongside, was George; another lantern was set on one of the seats.

"Are you busy to-morrow afternoon?" asked Geisner of Ned, as Nellie was being handed in, after having kissed Josie.

"Not particularly," answered Ned.

"Then you might meet me in front of the picture gallery between one and two, and we can have a quiet chat."

"All aboard!" shouted George.

"I'll be there," answered Ned, shaking hands again with Geisner and Stratton and with Josie, noticing that that young lady had a very warm clinging hand.

"Good-bye! Good-bye! Good-bye!" From the three on shore.

"Good-bye! Good-bye! Good-bye!" From the three in the boat as George shoved off.

"Good-bye!" cried Connie's clear voice from the verandah. "Put up the umbrella, Ned!"

Ned obediently put up the umbrella she had lent him, overcoming his objections by pointing out that it would keep Nellie's hat from being spoiled. Then George's oars began to dip into the water, and they turned their backs to the pleasant home and faced out into the wind and wet.

The last sound that came to them was a long melodious cry that Josie sent across the water to George, a loving "Good-bye!" that plainly meant "Come back!"



CHAPTER IX.

"THIS IS SOCIALISM!"

The working of George's oars and the rippling of water on the bow were all that broke the silence as the skiff moved across the harbour. Suddenly Ned lost sight of the swinging lantern that Josie had held at the little landing stairs and without it could not distinguish the house they had left. Here and there behind them were lights of various kinds and sizes, shining blurred through the faint drizzle. He saw similar lights in front and on either hand. Yet the darkness was so deep now that but for the lantern on the fore thwarts he could not have seen George at all.

There were no sounds but those of their rowing.

Nellie sat erect, half hidden in the umbrella Ned held over her. George pulled a long sweeping stroke, bringing it up with a jerk that made the rowlocks sound sharply. When he bent back they could feel the light boat lift under them. He looked round now and then, steering himself by some means inscrutable to the others, who without him would have been lost on this watery waste.

All at once George stopped rowing. "Listen!" he exclaimed.

There was a swishing sound as of some great body rushing swiftly through the water near them. It ceased suddenly; then as suddenly sounded again.

"Sharks about," remarked George, in a matter-of-fact tone, rowing again with the same long sweeping stroke as before.

Nellie did not stir. She was used to such incidents, evidently. But Ned had never before been so close to the sea-tigers and felt a creepy sensation. He would much rather, he thought, be thirty-five miles from water with a lame horse than in the company of sharks on a dark wet night in the middle of Sydney harbour.

"Are they dangerous?" he asked, with an attempt at being indifferent.

"I Suppose so," answered George, in a casual way. "If one of them happened to strike the boat it might be unpleasant. But they're terrible cowards."

"Are there many?"

"In the harbour? Oh, yes, it swarms with them. You see that light," and George pointed to the left, where one of the lights had detached itself from the rest and shone close at hand. "That's on a little island and in the convict days hard cases were put on it—I think it was on that island or one like it—and the sharks saw that none of them swam ashore."

"They seem to have used those convicts pretty rough," remarked Ned.

"Rough's no name," said George after a few minutes. "It was as vile and unholy a thing, that System, as anything they have in Russia. A friend of mine has been working the thing up for years, and is going to start writing it up soon. You must read it when it comes out. It'll make you hate everything that has a brass button on. I tell you, this precious Law of ours has something to answer for. It was awful, horrible, and it's not all gone yet, as I know."

He rowed on for a space in silence.

"There's one story I think of, sometimes, rowing across here, and hearing the sharks splash. At one place they used to feed the dead convicts to the sharks so as to keep them swarming about, and once they flung one in before he was dead."

Nellie gave a stifled exclamation. Ned was too horror-struck to answer; above the clicking of the oars in the rowlocks he fancied he could hear the swish of the savage sharks rushing through the water at their living prey. He was not sorry when George again rested on his oars to say:

"Will you land at the point this time, Nellie?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Well, here you are! We've had a pretty fastish pull over, considering."

Two or three more strokes brought them to a flight of low stone steps. By the light of the lantern Ned and Nellie were disembarked.

"I won't keep you talking in the rain, Nellie," said George. "I'm sorry you are going away so soon, Hawkins. We could have given you some boating if you had time. You might come out to-morrow afternoon—that's this afternoon—if you haven't anything better to do."

"I'm very much obliged, but I was going to meet Mr. Geisner."

"That settles it then. Anybody would sooner have a yarn with Geisner. We'll fix some boating when you're down again. You'll come again. Won't he, Nellie? Good-bye and a pleasant trip! Good-bye, Nellie." And having shaken hands by dint of much arm stretching, George pushed his boat away from the steps and pulled away.

Nellie stood for a minute watching the lantern till it turned the point, heading eastward. Then straightening the waterproof over her dress she took Ned's arm and they walked off.

"He's a nice sort of chap," remarked Ned, referring to George.

"Yes, he's a great oarsman. He rows over to see Josie. Mrs. Stratton calls them Hero and Leander."

"Why? Who were they?"

"Oh! Leander was Hero's sweetheart and used to swim across the water to her so that nobody should see him."

"They're to be married, I suppose?"

"Yes, next month."

"Those Strattons are immense—what's that noise, Nellie?" he interrupted himself. A strange groaning from close at hand had startled him.

"Somebody asleep, I suppose," she answered, more accustomed to the Sydney parks. But she stopped while, under the umbrella, he struck a match with a bushman's craft.

By the light of the match they saw a great hollow in the rocks that bordered on one side the gravelled footway. The rocks leaned out and took in part of the path, which widened underneath. Sheltered thus from the rain and wind a number of men were sleeping, outcast, some in blankets, some lying on the bare ground. The sound they had beard was a medley of deep breathing and snoring. It was but a glimpse they caught as the match flared up for a minute. It went out and they could see nothing, only the faint outline of path and rock. They could hear still the moaning sound that had attracted them.

They walked on without speaking for a time.

"How did you know the Strattons?" resumed Ned.

"At the picture gallery one Sunday. She was writing some article defending their being opened on the 'Sawbath' and I had gone in. I like pictures—some pictures, you know. We got talking and she showed me things in the pictures I'd never dreamed of before. We stayed there till closing time and she asked me to come to see her.

"She's immense!"

"I'm so glad you like her. Everybody does."

"Has she any children?"

"Four. Such pretty children. She and her husband are so fond of each other. I can't imagine people being happier."

"I suppose they're pretty well off, Nellie?"

"No, I don't think they're what you'd call well off. They're comfortable, you know. She has to put on a sort of style, she's told me, to take the edge off her ideas. If you wear low-necked dress you can talk the wildest things, she says, and I think it's so. That's business with her. She has to mix with low-necked people a little. It's her work."

"Does she have to work?"

"No. I suppose not. But I think she prefers to. She never writes what she doesn't think, which is pleasanter than most writers find it. Then I should think she'd feel more independent, however much she cares for her husband. And then she has a little girl who's wonderfully clever at colours, so she's saving up to send her to Paris when she's old enough. They think she'll become a great painter—the little girl, I mean."

"What does that Josie do?"

"She's a music-teacher."

"They're all clever, aren't they?"

"Yes. But, of course, they've all had a chance. Ford is the most remarkable. He never got any education to speak of until he was over 20. The Strattons have been born as they live now. They've had some hard times, I think, from what they say now and then, but they've always been what's called 'cultured.' Everybody ought to be as they are."

"I think so, too, Nellie, but can everybody be as well off as they are?"

"They're not well off, I told you, Ned. If they spend L5 a week it's as much as they do. Of course that sounds a lot, but since if things were divided fairly everybody who works ought to get far more, it's not extravagant riches. Wine and water doesn't cost more than beer, and the things they've got were picked up bit by bit. It's what they've got and the way it's put that looks so nice. There's nothing but what's pretty, and she is always adding something or other. She idolises Art and worships everything that's beautiful."

"Do you think it's really that sort of thing that makes people better?" said Ned.

"How can it help making them better if their hearts are good? When what is ugly and miserable in life jars on one at every turn because one loves so what is harmonious and beautiful, there seems to me to be only one of two things to be done, either to shut your eyes to others and become a selfish egotist or to try with all your strength to bring a beautiful life to others. I'm speaking, of course, particularly of people like the Strattons. But I think that hatred of what is repulsive is a big influence with all of us."

"You mean of dirty streets, stuffy houses and sloppy clothes?"

"Oh! More than that. Of ugly lives, of ugly thoughts, of others, and ourselves perhaps, just existing like working bullocks when we might be so happy, of living being generally such a hateful thing when it might be so sweet!"

"I suppose the Strattons are happy?"

"Not as happy as everybody might be if the world was right. They understand music and pictures and colouring and books. He reads science a lot and paints—funny mixture, isn't it?—and she teaches the children a great deal. They go boating together. They both work at what they like and are clever enough to be fairly sure of plenty to do. They have friends who take an interest in the things that interest them and their children are little angels. They aren't short of money for anything they need because they really live simply and so have plenty to spend. And, then, they are such kind people. She has a way with her that makes you feel better no matter how miserable you've been. That's happiness, I think, as far as it goes. But she feels much as I do about children. She is so afraid that they will not be happy and blames herself for being selfish because other people's children never have any happiness and would do anything to alter things so that it would be different. Still, of course, they have a happy life as far as the life itself goes. I think, the way they live, they must both feel as if they were each better and knew more and cared for each other more the older they get."

"It must be very pleasant," said Ned, after a pause. They had reached the higher ground and were passing under branches from which the rain-drops, collected, fell in great splashes on the umbrella.

"Yes," said Nellie, after another pause.

"Do they go to church?" Ned began again.

"I never heard them say they did."

"They're not religious then?"

"What do you call religious?"

"They don't believe anything, do they?"

"I think they believe a very great deal. Far more than most people who pretend to believe and don't," answered Nellie. There was a longer pause. Then:

"What do they believe?"

"In Socialism."

"Socialism! Look here, Nellie! What is Socialism?"

They had passed the fig-tree avenue, turning off it by a cross path, where a stone fountain loomed up gigantic in the gloom and where they could hear a rushing torrent splashing. They were in the region of gas-lamps again. Nellie walked along with a swiftness that taxed Ned to keep abreast of her. She seemed to him to take pleasure in the wet night. In spite of their long walking of the day before and the lateness of the hour she had still the same springy step and upright carriage. As they passed under the lamps he saw her face, damp with the rain, but flushed with exercise, her eyes gleaming, her mouth open a little. He would have liked to have taken her hand as she steadied the umbrella, walking arm in arm with him, but he did not dare. She was not that sort of girl.

He had felt a proud sense of proprietorship in her at the Strattons'. It had pleased him to see how they all liked her, but pleased him most of all that she could talk as an equal with these people, to him so brilliant and clever. The faint thought of her which had been unconsciously with him for years began to take shape. How pleasant it would be to be like the Strattons, to live with Nellie always, and have friends to come and see them on a Saturday night! How a man would work for a home like that, so full of music, so full of song, so full of beauty, so full of the thoughts which make men like unto gods and of the love which makes gods like unto men! Why should not this be for him as well as for others when, as Nellie said, it really cost only what rich people thought poverty, and far less than the workingman's share if things were fairly divided? And why should it not be for his mates as well as for himself? And why, most of all, why not for the wretched dwellers in the slums of Sydney, the weary women, the puny children, the imbruted men? For the first time in his life, he coveted such things with a righteous covetousness, without hating those who had them, recognising without words that to have and to appreciate such a life was to desire ceaselessly to bring it within the reach of every human being. He could not see how this was all to come about. He would have followed blindly anybody who played the Marseillaise as Geisner did. He was ready to echo any ringing thought that appealed to him as good and noble. But he did not know. He could see that in the idea called by Mrs. Stratton "the Cause" there was an understood meaning which fitted his aspirations and his desires. He had gathered, his narrow bigotry washed from him, that between each and all of those whom he had just left there was a bond of union, a common thought, an accepted way. He had met them strangers, and had left them warm friends. The cartoonist, white with rage at the memory of the high rectory wall that shut the beautiful from the English poor; the gloomy poet whose verses rang still in his ears and would live in his heart for ever; the gray-eyed woman who idolised Art, as Nellie said, and fanned still the fire in which her nearest kin had perished; the pressman, with his dream of a free press that would not serve the money power; the painter to whom the chiselled stone spoke; the pretty girl who had been cradled amid barricades; the quiet musician for whom the bitterness of death was past, born leader of men, commissioned by that which stamped him what he was; the dressmaking girl, passionately pleading the cause of Woman; even himself, drinking in this new life as the ground sucks up the rain after a drought; between them all there was a bond—"the Cause." What was this Cause? To break down all walls, to overthrow all wrong, to destroy the ugliness of human life, to free thought, to elevate Art, to purify Love, to lift mankind higher, to give equality to women, to—to—he did not see exactly where he himself came in—all this was the Cause. Yet he did not quite understand it, just the same. Nor did he know how it was all to come about. But he intended to find out. So he asked Nellie what the Strattons believed, feeling instinctively that there must be belief in something.

"What do they believe?" he had asked.

"In Socialism," Nellie had answered.

"Socialism! Look here, Nellie! What is Socialism?" he had exclaimed.

They neared a lamp, shining mistily in the drizzle. Close at hand was a seat, facing the grass. In the dim light was what looked like a bundle of rags thrown over the seat and trailing to the ground. Nellie stopped. It was a woman, sleeping.

There, under a leafy tree, whose flat branches shielded her somewhat from the rain, slept the outcast. She had dozed off into slumber, sitting there alone. She was not lying, only sitting there, her arm flung over the back of the seat, her head fallen on her shoulder, her face upturned to the pitying night. It was the face of a street-walker, bloated and purplish, the poor pretence of colour gone, the haggard lines showing, all the awful life of her stamped upon it; yet in the lamplight, upturned in its helplessness, sealed with the sleep that had come at last to her, sore-footed, as softly as it might have come to a little baby falling asleep amid its play, there enhaloed it the incarnation of triumphant suffering. On the swollen cheeks of the homeless woman the night had shed its tears of rain. There amid the wind and wet, in the darkness, alone and weary, shame-worn and sin-sodden, scorned by the Pharisee, despised by the vicious, the harlot slept and forgot. Calm as death itself was the face of her. Softly and gently she breathed, as does the heavy-eyed bride whose head the groom's arm pillows. Nature, our Mother Nature, had taken her child for a moment to her breast and the outcast rested there awhile, all sorrows forgotten, all desires stilled, all wrongs and sins and shame obscured and blotted out. She envied none. Equal was she with all. Great indeed is Sleep, which teaches us day by day that none is greater in God's sight than another, that as we all came equal and naked from the unknown so naked and equal we shall all pass on to the Unknown again, that this life is but as a phantasy in which it is well to so play one's part that nightly one falls asleep without fear and meets at last the great sleep without regret!

But, oh, the suffering that had earned for this forsaken sister the sweet sleep she slept! Oh, the ceaseless offering of this sin-stained body, the contumelious jeers she met, the vain search through streets and avenues this wild night, for the blind lust that would give her shelter and food! Oh, the efforts to beg, the saints who would not wait to listen to such a one, the sinners who were as penniless! Oh, the shivering fits that walk, walk, walk, when the midnight hours brought silence and solitude, the stamps that racked her poor limbs when she laid down, exhausted, in dripping garments, on the hard park seats, the aching feet that refused at last the ceaseless tramping in their soaked and broken shoes! Oh, the thoughts of her, the memories, the dreams of what had been and what might be, as she heard the long hours toll themselves away! Oh, the bitter tears she may have shed, and the bitter words she may have uttered, and the bitter hate that may have overflowed in her against that vague something we call Society! And, oh, the sweet sleep that fell upon her at last, unexpected—as the end of our waiting shall come, when we weary most—falling upon her as the dew falls, closing her weary eye-lids, giving her peace and rest and strength to meet another to-day!

Ned stopped when Nellie did, of course. Neither spoke. A sense of great shame crept upon him, he hardly knew why. He could not look at Nellie. He wished she would move on and leave him there. The silent pathos of that sleeping face cried to him. Lowest of the low, filthy, diseased probably, her face as though the womanliness had been stamped from her by a brutal heel of iron, she yet was a woman. This outcast and Nellie were of one sex; they all three were of one Humanity.

A few hours before and he would have passed her by with a glance of contemptuous pity. But now, he seemed to have another sense awakened in him, the sense that feels, that sympathises in the heart with the hearts of others. It was as though he himself slept there. It was as though he understood this poor sister, whom the merciful called erring, and the merciless wicked, but of whom the just could only say: she is what we in her place must have become. She was an atom of the world of suffering by which his heart was being wrung. She was one upon whom the Wrong fell crushingly, and she was helpless to resist it. He was strong, and he had given no thought to those who suffered as this poor outcast suffered. He had lived his own narrow life, and shared the sin, and assisted Wrong by withholding his full strength from the side of Right. And upon him was the responsibility for this woman. He, individually, had kicked her into the streets, and dragged her footsore through the parks, and cast her there to bear testimony against him to every passer-by; he, because he had not fought, whole-souled, with those who seek to shatter the something which, without quite understanding, he knew had kicked and dragged and outcasted this woman sleeping here. Ned always took his lessons personally. It was perhaps, a touch in him of the morbidity that seizes so often the wandering Arabs of the western plains.

Suddenly Nellie let go the umbrella, leaving it in his hand. She bent forward, stooped down. The strong young face, proud and sad, so pure in its maiden strength, glowing with passionate emotion, was laid softly against that bruised and battered figurehead of shipwrecked womanhood; Nellie had kissed the sleeping harlot on the cheek.

Then, standing erect, she turned to Ned, her lips parted, her face quivering, her eyes flashing, her hand resting gently on the unconscious woman.

"You want to know what Socialism is," she said, in a low, trembling voice. "This is Socialism." And bending down again she kissed the poor outcast harlot a second time. The woman never stirred. Seizing Ned's arm Nellie drew him away, breaking into a pace that made him respect her prowess as a walker ever after.

Until they reached home neither spoke. Nellie looked sterner than ever. Ned was in a whirl of mental excitement. Perhaps if he had been less natural himself the girl's passionate declaration of fellowship with all who are wronged and oppressed—for so he interpreted it by the light of his own thoughts—might have struck him as a little bit stagey. Being natural, he took it for what it was, an outburst of genuine feeling. But if Nellie had really designed it she could not have influenced him more deeply. Their instincts, much akin, had reached the same idea by different ways. Her spontaneous expression of feeling had fitted in her mind to the Cause which possessed her as a religious idea, and had capped in him the human yearnings which were leading him to the same goal. And so, what with his overflowing sympathy for the sleeping outcast, and his swelling love for Nellie, and the chaotic excitement roused in him by all he had seen and heard during the preceding hours, that kiss burnt itself into his imagination and became to him all his life through as a sacred symbol. From that moment his life was forecast—a woman tempted him and he ate.

For that kiss Ned gave himself into the hands of a fanaticism, eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, striving to become as a god knowing good from evil. For that kiss he became one of those who have the Desire which they know can never be satiated in them. For that kiss he surrendered himself wholly to the faith of her whose face was sad and stern-mouthed, content ever after if with his whole life he could fill one of the ruts that delay the coming of Liberty's triumphal car. To that turning-point in his life, other events led up, certainly, events which of themselves would likely have forced him to stretch out his hand and pluck and eat. It is always that way with life changes. Nothing depends altogether upon one isolated act. But looking back in after years, when the lesser influences had cleared away in the magic glass of Time, Ned could ever see, clear and distinct as though it were but a minute since, the stern red lips of that pale, proud, passionate face pressed in trembling sisterliness to the harlot's purple cheek.

As she put the key in the door Nellie turned to Ned, speaking for the first time:

"You'd better ask Geisner about Socialism when you see him to-morrow—I mean this afternoon."

Ned nodded without speaking. Silently he let her get his candle, and followed her up the stairs to the room concerning which the card was displayed in the window below. She turned down the bedclothes, then held out her hand.

"Good-night or good-morning, whichever it is!" she said, smiling at him. "You can sleep as long as you like Sunday morning, you know. If you want anything knock the wall there."

"Good-night, Nellie!" he answered, slowly, holding her fingers in his. Then, before she could stop him, he lifted her hand to his lips. She did not snatch it away but looked him straight in the eyes, without speaking; then went out, shutting the door softly behind her. She understood him partly; not altogether, then.

Left alone in the scantily-furnished room, Ned undressed, blew out the candle and went to bed. But until he fell asleep, and in his dreams afterwards, he still saw Nellie bending down over a purpled, sin-stained face, and heard her sweet voice whisper tremblingly:

"This is Socialism!"



CHAPTER X.

WHERE THE EVIL REALLY LIES.

Geisner was betimes at his appointment in the Domain. It was still the dinner hour, and though it was Sunday there were few to be seen on the grass or along the paths. So Ned saw him afar off, pacing up and down before the Art Gallery like a sentinel, an ordinary looking man to a casual passer-by, one whom you might pass a hundred times on the street and not notice particularly, even though he was ugly. Perhaps because of it.

Neither of them cared to stroll about, they found. Accordingly they settled down at a shady patch on a grassy slope, the ground already dried from the night's rain by the fierce summer sunshine of the morning. Stretched out there, Geisner proceeded to roll a cigarette and Ned to chew a blade of grass.

Below them a family were picnicking quietly. Dinner was over; pieces of paper littered the ground by an open basket. The father lay on his side smoking, the mother was giving a nursing baby its dinner, one little child lay asleep under a tree and two or three wore were playing near at hand.

"That reminds me of Paris," remarked Geisner, watching them.

"I suppose you are French?"

"No. I've been in France considerably."

"It's a beautiful country, isn't it?"

"All countries are beautiful in their way. Sydney Harbour is the most beautiful spot I know. I hardly know where I was born. In Germany I think."

"Things are pretty bad in those old countries, aren't they?"

"Things are pretty bad everywhere, aren't they?"

"Yes," answered Ned, meditatively. "They seem to be. They're bad enough here and this is called the workingman's paradise. But a good many seem glad enough to get here from other countries. It must be pretty bad where they come from."

"So it is. It is what it is here, only more so. It is what things will be in a very few years here if you let them go on. As a matter of fact the old countries ought to be wore prosperous than the new ones, but our social system has become so ill-balanced that in the countries where there are most people at work those people are more wretched than where there are comparatively few working."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, this way. The wealth production of thickly settled countries is proportionately greater than that of thinly settled countries. Of course, there would be a limit somewhere, but so far no country we know of has reached it."

"You don't mean that a man working in England or France earns more than a man working in Australia?" demanded Ned, sitting up. "I thought it was the other way."

"I don't mean he gets more but I certainly mean that he produces more. The appliances are so much better, and the sub-division of labour, that is each man doing one thing until he becomes an expert at it, is carried so much further by very virtue of the thicker population."

"That's to say they have things fixed so that they crush more to the ton of work."

"About that. Taking the people all round, and throwing in kings and queens and aristocrats and the parsons that Ford loves so, every average Englishman produced yesterday more wealth—more boots, more tools, more cloth, more anything of value—than every average Australian. And every average Belgian produced yesterday, or any day, more wealth than every average Englishman. These are facts you can see in any collection of statistics. The conservative political economists don't deny them; they only try to explain them away."

"But how does it come? Men produce more there than we do here and earn less. How's that?"

"Simply because they're robbed more."

"Look here, Mr. Geisner!" said Ned, gathering his knees into his arms. "That's what I want to know. I know we're robbed. Any fool can see that those who work the least or don't work at all get pretty much everything, but I don't quite see how they get it. We're only just beginning to think of these things in the bush, and we don't know much yet. We only know there's something wrong, but we don't know what to do except to get a union and keep up wages."

"That's the first step, to get a union," said Geisner. "But unless unionists understand what it's all about they'll only be able to keep up wages for a little while. You see, Ned, this is the difficulty: a man can't work when he likes."

"A man can't work when he likes!"

"No; not the average man and it's the average man who has to be considered always. Let's take a case—yourself. You want to live. Accordingly, you must work, that is you must produce what you need to live upon from the earth by your labour or you must produce something which other working men need and these other men will give you in exchange for it something they have produced which you need. Now, let's imagine you wanting to live and desiring to start to-morrow morning to work for your living. What would you do?"

"I suppose I'd ask somebody."

"Ask what?"

"Well, I'd have to ask somebody or other if there was any work."

"What work?"

"Well, if they had a job they wanted me to do, that I could do, you know."

"I don't 'You know' anything. I want you to explain. Now what would you say?"

"Oh! I'd kind of go down to the hut likely and see the boys if 'twas any use staying about and then, perhaps, or it might be before I went to the hut, that would be all according, I'd see the boss and sound him."

"How sound him?"

"Well, that would be all according, too. If I was pretty flush and didn't care a stiver whether I got a job or not I'd waltz right up to him just as I might to you to ask the time, and if he came any of his law-de-dah squatter funny business on me I'd give him the straight wire, I promise you. But it stands to reason—don't it?—that if I've been out of graft for months and haven't got any money and my horses are played out and there's no chance of another job, well, I'm going to humor him a bit more than I'd like to, ain't I?"

Geisner laughed "You see it all right, Ned. Suppose the first man you sounded said no?"

"I'd try another."

"And if the other said no?"

"Well, I'd have to keep on trying."

"And you'd get more inclined to humour the boss every time you had to try again."

"Naturally. That's how they get at us. No man's a crawler who's sure of a job."

"Then you might take lower wages, and work longer hours, after you'd been out of work till you'd got thoroughly disheartened than you would now."

"I wouldn't. Not while there was—I might have to, though I say I'd starve or steal first. There are lots who do, I suppose."

"Lots who wouldn't dream of doing it if there was plenty of work to be had?"

"Of course. Who'd work for less than another man if he needn't, easily? There isn't one man in a thousand who'd do another fellow out of a job for pure meanness. The chaps who do the mischief are those who're so afraid the boss'll sack them, and that another boss won't take them on, that they'd almost lick his boots if they thought it would please him."

"Now we're coming to it. It is work being hard to get that lowers wages and increases hours, and makes a workman, or workwoman either, put up with what nobody would dream of putting up with if they could help it?"

"Of course that's it."

"Now! Is the day's work done by a poorly-paid man less than that done by a highly-paid one?"

"No," answered Ned. "I've seen it more," he added.

"How's that?"

"Well, when a man's anxious to keep a job and afraid he won't get another he'll often nearly break his back bullocking at it. When he feels independent he'll do the fair thing, and sling the job up if the boss tries to bullock him. It's the same thing all along the line, it seems to me. When you can get work easily you get higher wages, shorter hours, some civility, and only do the fair thing. When you can't, wages come down, hours spin out, the boss puts on side, and you've got to work like a nigger."

"Then, roughly speaking, the amount of work you do hasn't got very much to do with the pay you get for it?"

"I suppose not. It's not likely a man ever gets more than his work is worth. The boss would soon knock him off and let the work slide. I suppose a man is only put on to a job when its worth more than the boss has to pay for getting it done. And I reckon the less a man can be got to do it for the better it is for the fellow who gets the job done."

"That's it. Suppose you can't get work no matter how often you ask, what do you do?"

"Keep on looking. Live on rations that the squatters serve out to keep men travelling the country so they can get them if they want them or on mutton you manage to pick up or else your mates give you a bit of a lift. You must live. It's beg or steal or else starve."

"I think men and women are beginning to starve in Australia. Many are quite starving in the old countries and have been starving longer. That's why the workers are somewhat worse off there than here. The gold rushes gave things a lift here and raised the condition of the workers wonderfully. But the same causes that have been working in the old countries have been working here and are fast beating things down again."

"A gold rush!" exclaimed Ned. "That's the thing to make wages rise, particularly if it's a poor man's digging."

"What's that?"

"Don't you know? An alluvial field is where you can dig out gold with a pick and shovel and wash it out with a pannikin. You don't want any machines, and everybody digs for himself, or mates with other fellows, and if you want a man to do a job you've got to pay him as much as he could dig for himself in the time."

"I see. 'Poor man's digging,' you call it, eh? You don't think much of a reefing field?"

"Of course not," answered Ned, smiling at this apparent ignorance. "Reefing fields employ men, and give a market, and a few strike it, but the average man, as you call him, hasn't got a chance. It takes so much capital for sinking and pumping and crushing, and things of that sort, that companies have to be formed outside, and the miners mostly work just for wages. And when a reefing field gets old it's as bad as a coal-field or a factory town. You're just working for other people, and the bigger the dividends the more anxious they seem to be to knock wages"

"Then this is what it all amounts to. If you aren't working for yourself you're working for somebody else who pays as little as he can for as much as he can get, and rubs the dirt in, often, into the bargain."

"A man may not earn wages working for himself," answered Ned.

"You mean he may not produce for himself as much value as men around him receive in wages for working for somebody else. Of course! You might starve working on Mount Morgan or Broken Hill with a pick and pannikin, though on an alluvial your pick and pannikin would be all you needed. That's the kernel of the industrial question. Industry has passed out of the alluvial stage into the reefing. We must have machinery to work with or we may all starve in the midst of mountains of gold."

"I don't quite see how you mean."

"Just this. If every man could take his pick on his shoulders and work for himself with reasonable prospect of what he regarded as a sufficient return he wouldn't ask anybody else for work."

"Not often, anyway."

"But if he cannot so work for himself he must go round looking for the man who has a shaft or a pump or a stamping mill and must bargain for the owner of machinery to take the product of his labour for a certain price which of course isn't it's full value at all but the price at which, owing to his necessities, he is compelled to sell his labour.

"Things are getting so in all branches of industry, in squatting, in manufacturing, in trading, in ship-owning, in everything, that it takes more and more capital for a man to start for himself. This is a necessary result of increasing mechanical powers and of the economy of big businesses as compared to small ones. For example, if there is a great advantage in machine clipping, as a friend of mine who understands such things tells me there is, all wool will some day be clipped that way. Then, the market being full of superior machine-clipped wool, hand-clipped would have little sale and only at lower price. The result would be that all wool-growers must have machines as part of their capital, an additional expense, making it still harder for a man with a small capital to start wool-growing.

"All this means," continued Geisner, "that more and more go round asking for work as what we call civilisation progresses, that is as population increases and the industrial life becomes more complicated. I don't mean in Australia only. I'm speaking generally. They can only work when another man thinks he can make a profit out of them, and there are so many eager to be made a profit on that the owner of the machine has it pretty well his own way. This system operates for the extension of its own worst feature, the degradation of the working masses. You see, such a vast amount of industrial work can be held over that employers, sometimes unconsciously, sometimes deliberately, hold work over until times are what they call 'more suitable,' that is when they can make bigger profits by paying less in wages. This has a tendency to constantly keep wages down, besides affording a stock argument against unionist agitations for high wages. But, in any case, the fits of industrial briskness and idleness which occur in all countries are enough to account for the continual tendency of wages to a bare living amount for those working, as many of those not working stand hungrily by to jump into their places if they get rebellious or attempt to prevent wages going down."

"That's just how it is," said Ned. "But we're going to get all men into unions, and then we'll keep wages up."

"Yes; there is no doubt that unions help to keep wages up. But, you see, so long as industrial operations can be contracted, and men thrown out of work, practically at the pleasure of those who employ, complete unionism is almost impracticable if employers once begin to act in concert. Besides, the unemployed are a menace to unionism always. Workmen can never realise that too strongly."

"What are we to do then if we can't get what we want by unionism?"

"How can you get what you want by unionism? The evil is in having to ask another man for work at all—in not being able to work for yourself. Unionism, so far, only says that if this other man does employ you he shall not take advantage of your necessity by paying you less than the wage which you and your fellow workmen have agreed to hold out for. You must destroy the system which makes it necessary for you to work for the profit of another man, and keeps you idle when he can't get a profit out of you. The whole wage system must be utterly done away with." And Geisner rolled another cigarette as though it was the simplest idea in the world.

"How? What will you do instead?"

"How! By having men understand what it is, and how there can be no true happiness and no true manliness until they overthrow it! By preaching socialistic ideas wherever men will listen, and forcing them upon them where they do not want to listen! By appealing to all that is highest in men and to all that is lowest—to their humanity and to their selfishness! By the help of the education which is becoming general, by the help of art and of science, and even of this vile press that is the incarnation of all the villainies of the present system! By living for the Cause, and by being ready to die for it! By having only one idea: to destroy the Old Order and to bring in the New!" Geisner spoke quietly, but in his voice was a ring that made Ned's blood tingle in his veins.

"What do you call the Old Order?" asked Ned, lying back and looking up at the sky through the leaves.

"Everything that is inhuman, everything that is brutal, everything which relies upon the taking advantage of a fellow-man, which leads to the degradation of a woman or to the unhappiness of a child. Everything which is opposed to the idea of human brotherhood. That which produces scrofulous kings, and lying priests, and greasy millionaires, and powdered prostitutes, and ferret-faced thieves. That which makes the honest man a pauper and a beggar, and sets the clever swindler in parliament. That which makes you what you are at 24, a man without a home, with hardly a future. That which tries to condemn those who protest to starvation, and will yet condemn them to prison here in Australia as readily as ever it did in Europe or Russia.

"You want to know what makes this," he went on. "Well, it is what we have been talking of, that you should have to ask another man for work so that you may live. It doesn't matter what part of the world you are in or under what form of government, it is the same everywhere. So long as you can't work without asking another man for permission you are exposed to all the ills that attend poverty and all the tyranny that attends inordinate power and luxury. When you grip that, you understand half the industrial problem."

"And the other half, what's that?" asked Ned.

"This, that we've got over the alluvial days, if they ever did exist industrially, and are in the thick of reefing fields and syndicates. So much machinery is necessary now that no ordinary single man can own the machinery he needs to work with as he could in the old pick and pannikin days. This makes him the slave of those who do own it for he has to work to live. Men must all join together to own the machinery they must have to work with, so that they may use it to produce what they need as they need it and will not have to starve unless some private owner of machinery can make a profit out of their labour. They must pull together as mates and work for what is best for all, not each man be trying only for himself and caring little whether others live or die. We must own all machinery co-operatively and work it co-operatively."

"How about the land? Oughtn't that to be owned by the people too?"

"Why, of course. The land is a part of the machinery of production. Henry George separates it but in reality it is simply one of the means by which we live, nowadays, for no man but an absolute savage can support himself on the bare land. In the free land days which Henry George quotes, the free old German days when we were all barbarians and didn't know what a thief was, not only was the land held in common but the cattle also. Without its cattle a German tribe would have starved on the richest pastureland in Europe, and without our machinery we would starve were the land nationalised to-morrow. At least I think so. George's is a scheme by which it is proposed to make employers compete so fiercely among one another that the workman will have it all his own way. It works this way. You tax the landowner until it doesn't pay him to have unused land. He must either throw it up or get it used somehow and the demand for labour thus created is to lift wages and put the actual workers in what George evidently considers a satisfactory position. That's George's Single Tax scheme."

"You don't agree with it?" asked Ned.

"I am a Socialist. Between all Socialists and all who favour competition in industry, as the Single Tax scheme does, there is a great gulf fixed. Economically, I consider it fallacious, for the very simple reason that capitalism continues competition, not to selling at cost price but to monopoly, and I have never met an intelligent Single Taxer, and I have met many, who could logically deny the possibility of the Single Tax breaking down in an extension of this very monopoly power. Roughly, machinery is necessary to work land most profitably, profitably enough even to get a living off it. Suppose machine holders, that is capitalists, extend their organisation a little and 'pool' their interests as land users, that is refuse to compete against one another for the use of land! Nellie was telling me that at one land sale on the Darling Downs in Queensland the selectors about arranged matters among themselves beforehand. The land sold, owing to its situation, was only valuable to those having other land near and so was all knocked down at the upset price though worth four times as much. It seems to me that in just the same way the capitalists, who alone can really use land remember, for the farmer, the squatter, the shopkeeper, the manufacturer, the merchant, are nowadays really only managers for banks and mortgage companies, will soon arrange a way of fixing the values of land to suit themselves. But apart from that, I object to the Single Tax idea from the social point of view. It is competitive. It means that we are still to go on buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest. It is tinged with that hideous Free Trade spirit of England, by which cotton kings became millionaires while cotton spinners were treated far worse than any chattel slaves. There are other things to be considered besides cheapness, though unfortunately, with things as they are we seem compelled to consider cheapness first."

They lay for some time without speaking.



CHAPTER XI.

"IT ONLY NEEDS ENOUGH FAITH."

"You think land and stock and machinery should be nationalised, then?" asked Ned, turning things over in his mind.

"I think land and machinery, the entire means and processes of the production and exchange of wealth, including stock, should be held in common by those who need them and worked cooperatively for the benefit of all. That is the socialistic idea of industry. The State Socialists seek to make the State the co-operative medium, the State to be the company and all citizens to be equal shareholders as it were. State Socialism is necessarily compulsory on all. The other great socialistic idea, that of Anarchical Communism, bases itself upon voluntaryism and opposes all organised Force, whether of governments or otherwise."

"Then Anarchists aren't wicked men?"

"The Anarchist ideal is the highest and noblest of all human ideals. I cannot conceive of a good man who does not recognise that when he once understands it. The Anarchical Communists simply seek that men should live in peace and concord, of their own better nature, without being forced, doing harm to none, and being harmed by none. Of course the blind revolt against oppressive and unjust laws and tyrannical governments has become associated with Anarchy, but those who abuse it simply don't know what they do. Anarchical Communism, that is men working as mates and sharing with one another of their own free will, is the highest conceivable form of Socialism in industry."

"Are you an Anarchist?"

"No. I recognise their ideal, understand that it is the only natural condition for a community of general intelligence and fair moral health, and look to the time when it will be instituted. I freely admit it is the only form of Socialism possible among true Socialists. But the world is full of mentally and morally and socially diseased people who, I believe, must go through the school of State Socialism before, as a great mass, they are true Socialists and fit for voluntary Socialism. Unionism is the drill for Socialism and Socialism is the drill for Anarchy and Anarchy is that free ground whereon true Socialists and true Individualists meet as friends and mates, all enmity between them absorbed by the development of an all-dominant Humanity."

"Mates! Do you know that's a word I like?" said Ned. "It makes you feel good, just the sound of it. I know a fellow, a shearer, who was witness for a man in a law case once, and the lawyer asked him if he wasn't mates with the chap he was giving evidence for.

"'No,' says Bill, 'we ain't mates.'

"'But you've worked together?' says the lawyer. 'Oh, yes!' says Bill.

"'And travelled together?'

"'Oh, yes!'

"'And camped together?'

"'Oh, yes!'

"'Then if you're not mates what is mates?' says the lawyer in a bit of a tear.

"'Well, mister,' says Bill, 'mates is them wot's got one pus. If I go to a shed with Jack an' we're mates an' I earn forty quid and Jack gets sick an' only earns ten or five or mebbe nothin' at all we puts the whole lot in one pus, or if it's t'other way about an' Jack earns the forty it don't matter. There's one pus no matter how much each of us earns an' it b'longs just the same to both of us alike. If Jack's got the pus and I want half-a-crown, I says to Jack, says I, "Jack, gimme the pus." An' if Jack wants ten quid or twenty or the whole lot he just says to me, "Bill," says he "gimme the pus." I don't ask wot he's goin' to take and I don't care. He can take it all if he wants it, 'cos it stands to reason, don't it, mister?' says Bill to the lawyer, 'that a man wouldn't be so dirt mean as to play a low-down trick on his own mate. So you see, mister, him an' me warn't mates 'cos we had two pusses an' mates is them wot's got one pus.'"

Geisner laughed with Ned over the bush definition of "mates."

"Bill was about right," he said, "and Socialism would make men mates to the extent of all sharing up with one another. Each man might have a purse but he'd put no more into it than his mate who was sick and weak."

"We'd all work together and share together, I take it," said Ned. "But suppose a man wouldn't work fairly and didn't want to share?"

"I'd let him and all like him go out into the bush to see how they could get on alone. They'd soon get tired. Men must co-operate to live civilised."

"Then Socialism is co-operation?" remarked Ned.

"Co-operation as against competition is the main industrial idea of Socialism. But there are two Socialisms. There is a socialism with a little 's' which is simply an attempt to stave off the true Socialism. This small, narrow socialism means only the state regulation of the distribution of wealth. It has as its advocates politicians who seek to modify the robbery of the workers, to ameliorate the horrors of the competitive system, only in order to prevent the upheaval which such men recognise to be inevitable if things keep on unchanged."

"But true Socialism? I asked Nellie last night what Socialism was, but she didn't say just what."

"What did she say?"

"Well! We were coming through the Domain last night, this morning I mean. It was this morning, too. And on a seat in the rain, near a lamp, was a poor devil of a woman, a regular hardtimer, you know, sleeping with her head hung over the back of the seat like a fowl's. I'd just been asking Nellie what Socialism was when we came to the poor wretch and she stopped there. I felt a bit mean, you know, somehow, but all at once Nellie bent her head and kissed this street-walking woman on the cheek, softly, so she didn't wake her. 'That's Socialism,' says Nellie, and we didn't speak any more till we got to her place, and then she told me to ask you what Socialism was." Ned had shifted his position again and was sitting now on his heels. He had pulled out his knife and was digging a little hole among the grass roots.

Geisner, who hardly moved except to roll cigarettes and light them, lay watching him. "I think she's made you a Socialist," he answered, smiling.

"I suppose so," answered Ned, gravely. "If Socialism means that no matter what you are or what you've been we're all mates, and that Nellie's going to join hands with the street-walker, and that you're going to join hands with me, and that all of us are going to be kind to one another and have a good time like we did at Mrs. Stratton's last night, well, I'm a Socialist and there's heaps up in the bush will be Socialists too."

"You know what being a Socialist means, Ned?" asked Geisner, looking into the young man's eyes.

"I've got a notion," said Ned, looking straight back.

"There are socialists and Socialists, just as there is socialism and Socialism. The ones babble of what they do not feel because it's becoming the thing to babble. The others have a religion and that religion is Socialism."

"How does one know a religion?"

"When one is ready to sacrifice everything for it. When one only desires that the Cause may triumph. When one has no care for self and does not fear anything that man can do and has a faith which nothing can shake, not even one's own weakness!"

There was a pause. "I'll try to be a Socialist of the right sort," said Ned.

"You are young and hopeful and will think again and again that the day of redemption is dawning, and will see the night roll up again. You will see great movements set in and struggle to the front and go down when most was expected of them. You will see in the morning the crowd repent of its enthusiasm of the night before. You will find cowards where you expected heroes and see the best condemned to the suffering and penury that weaken the bravest. Your heart will ache and your stomach will hunger and your body will be bent and your head gray and then you may think that the world is not moving and that you have wasted your life and that none are grateful for it."

"I will try not," said Ned.

"You will see unionism grow, the New Unionism, which is simply the socialistic form of unionism. You will see, as I said before, penal laws invoked against unionism here in Australia, under the old pretence of 'law and order.' You will see the labour movement diverted into political action and strikes fought and lost and won at the polling booths."

"Will it not come then?"

"How can it come then? Socialism is not a thing which can be glued like a piece of veneering over this rotten social system of ours. It can only come by the utter sweeping away of competition, and that can only come by the development of the socialistic idea in men's hearts."

"Do you mean that unions and political action and agitations don't do any good?"

"Of course they do good. A union may make an employer rob his men of a few shillings weekly less. An act of Parliament may prevent wage-slaves from being worked sixteen hours a day. An act of Parliament, granted that Parliament represented the dominant thought of the people, could even enforce a change of the entire social system. But before action must come the dominant thought. Unions and Parliaments are really valuable as spreading the socialistic idea. Every unionist is somewhat socialist so far as he has agreed not to compete any longer against his fellows. Every act of Parliament is additional proof that the system is wrong and must go before permanent good can come. And year after year the number of men and women who hold Socialism as a religion is growing. And when they are enough you will see this Old Order melt away like a dream and the New Order replace it. That which appears so impregnable will pass away in a moment. So!" He blew a cloud of smoke and watched it disappear circling upwards.

"Listen!" he went on. "It only needs enough Faith. This accursed Competitivism of ours has no friends but those who fear personal loss by a change of system. Not one. It has hirelings, Pretorian guards, Varangians, but not a devoted people. Its crimes are so great that he is a self-condemned villain who knowing them dreams of justifying them. There is not one man who would mourn it for itself if it fell to-morrow. A dozen times this century it has been on the verge of destruction, and what has saved it every time is simply that those who assailed it had not a supreme ideal common among them as to how they should re-build. It is exactly the same with political action as with revolutionary movements. It will fail till men have faith."

"How can they get it?" asked Ned, for Geisner had ceased speaking and mused with a far-off expression on his face.

"If we ourselves have it, sooner or later we shall give it to others. Hearts that this world has wounded are longing for the ideal we bring; artist-souls that suffering has purified and edged are working for the Cause in every land; weak though we are we have a love for the Beautiful in us, a sense that revolts against the unloveliness of life as we have it, a conception of what might be if things were only right. In every class the ground is being turned by the ploughshare of Discontent; everywhere we can sow the seed broadcast with both hands. And if only one seed in a thousand springs up and boars, it is worth it."

"But how can one do it best?"

"By doing always the work that comes to one's hand. Just now, you can go back to your union and knowing what the real end is, can work for organisation as you never did before. You can help throw men together, tie the bushmen to the coastmen, break down narrow distinctions of calling and make them all understand that all who work are brothers whether they work by hand or brain. That is the New Unionism and it is a step forward. It is drill, organisation, drill, and we, need it. Men must learn to move together, to discuss and to decide together. You can teach them what political action will do when they know enough. And all the time you can drive and hammer into them the socialistic ideas. Tell them always, without mincing matters, that they are robbed as they would probably rob others if they had a chance, and that there never can be happiness until men live like mates and pay nothing to any man for leave to work. Tell them what life might be if men would only love one another and teach them to hate the system and not individual men in it. Some day you will find other work opening out. Always do that which comes to your hand."

"You think things will last a long time?" asked Ned, reverting to one of Geisner's previous remarks.

"Who can tell? While Belshazzar feasted the Medes were inside the gate. Civilisation is destroying itself. The socialistic idea is the only thing that can save it. I look upon the future as a mere race between the spread of Socialism as a religion and the spread of that unconditional Discontent which will take revenge for all its wrongs by destroying civilisation utterly, and with it much, probably most, that we have won so slowly and painfully, of Art and Science."

"That would be a pity," said Ned. He would have spoken differently had he not gone with Nellie last night, he thought while saying it.

"I think so. It means the whole work to be done over again. If Art and Science were based on the degradation of men I would say 'away with them.' But they are not. They elevate and ennoble men by bringing to them the fruition of elevated and noble minds. They are expressions of high thought and deep feeling; thought and feeling which can only do good, if it is good to become more human. The artist is simply one who has a little finer soul than others. Mrs. Stratton was saying last night before you came that Nellie is an artist because she has a soul. But it's only comparative. We've all got souls."

"Mrs. Stratton is a splendid woman," began Ned, after another pause.

"Very. Her father was a splendid man, too. He was a doctor, quite famed in his profession. The misery and degradation he saw among the poor made him a passionate Communist. Stratton's father was a Chartist, one of those who maintained that it was a bread-and-butter movement."

For some few minutes neither spoke.

"One of the most splendid men I ever knew," remarked Geisner, suddenly, "was a workman who organised a sort of co-operative housekeeping club among a number of single fellows. They took a good-sized 'fiat' and gradually extended it till they had the whole of the large house. Then this good fellow organised others until there were, I think, some thirty of them scattered about the city. They had cards which admitted any member of one house into any other of an evening, so that wherever a man was at night he could find friends and conversation and various games. I used to talk to him a great deal, helping him keep the books of an evening when he came home from his work. He had some great plans. Those places were hotbeds of Socialism," he added.

"What became of him?"

Geisner shrugged his shoulders without answering.

"Isn't it a pity that we can't co-operate right through in the same way?" said Ned.

"It's the easiest way to bring Socialism about," answered Geisner. "Many have thought of it. Some have tried. But the great difficulty seems to be to get the right conditions. Absolute isolation while the new conditions are being established; colonists who are rough and ready and accustomed to such work and at the same time are thoroughly saturated with Socialism; men accustomed to discuss and argue and at the same time drilled to abide, when necessary, by a majority decision; these are very hard to get. Besides, the attempts have been on small scales, and though some have been fairly successful as far as they went, have not pointed the great lesson. One great success would give men more Faith than a whole century of talking and preaching. And it will come when men are ready for it, when the times are ripe."

They were silent again.

"We would be free under Socialism?" asked Ned.

"What could stop us, even under State Socialism. The basis of all slavery and all slavish thought is necessarily the monopoly of the means of working, that is of living. If the State monopolises them, not the State ruled by the propertied classes but the State ruled by the whole people, to work would become every man's right. Nineteen laws out of twenty could then be dropped, for they would become useless. We should be free as men have never been before, because the ideal of the State would be toleration and kindness."

"Let's go and hear the speaking," he added, jumping up. "I've talked quite enough for once."

"You couldn't talk too much for me," answered Ned. "You ought to come up to a shed and have a pitch with the chaps. They'd sit up all night listening. I've to meet Nellie between five and six at the top of the steps in the garden," he added, a little bashfully. "Have we time?"

"Plenty of time," said Geisner, smiling. "You won't miss her."



CHAPTER XII.

LOVE AND LUST.

The picnic party had moved on while they talked, but a multitude of sitters and walkers were now everywhere, particularly as they climbed the slope to the level. There the Sunday afternoon meetings were in full swing.

On platforms of varying construction, mostly humble, the champions of multitudinous creeds and opinions were holding forth to audiences which did not always greet their utterances approvingly. They stood for a while near a vigorous iconoclast, who from the top of a kitchen chair laid down the Law of the Universe as revealed by one Clifford, overwhelming with contumely a Solitary opponent in the crowd who was foolish enough to attempt to raise an argument on the subject of "atoms." Near at hand, a wild-eyed religionary was trying to persuade a limited and drifting audience that a special dispensation had enabled him to foretell exactly the date of the Second Coming of Christ. Then came the Single Tax platform, a camp-stool with a board on it, wherefrom a slender lad, dark-eyed and good-looking, held forth, with a flow of language and a power of expression that was remarkable, upon the effectiveness of a land tax as a remedy for all social ills.