All this time I’d been wondering how it was they came to drop on our names so pat, and to find out that Jim and I had a share in the Momberah cattle racket. All they could have known was that we left the back of Boree at a certain day; and that was nothing, seeing that for all they knew we might have gone away to new country or anywhere. The more I looked at it the more I felt sure that someone had given to the police information about us—somebody who was in it and knew all about everything. It wasn’t Starlight. We could have depended our life on him. It might have been one of the other chaps, but I couldn’t think of anyone, except Warrigal. He would do anything in the world to spite me and Jim, I knew; but then he couldn’t hurt us without drawing the net tighter round Starlight.

Sooner than hurt a hair of his head he’d have put his hand into the fire and kept it there. I knew that from things I’d seen him do.

Starlight and I hadn’t much chance of a talk, but we managed to get news from each other, a bit at a time; that can always be managed. We were to be defended, and a lawyer fetched all the way from Sydney to fight our case for us. The money was there. Father managed the other part of it through people he had that did every kind of work for him; so when the judge came up we should have a show for it.

The weary long summer days—every one of them about twenty hours long—came to an end somehow or other. It was so hot and close and I was that miserable I had two minds to knock my brains out and finish the whole thing. I couldn’t settle to read, as I did afterwards. I was always wishing and wondering when I’d hear some news from home, and none ever came. Nomah was a bit of a place where hardly anybody did anything but idle and drink, and spend money when they had it. When they had none they went away. There wasn’t even a place to take exercise in, and the leg-irons I wore night and day began to eat into my flesh. I wasn’t used to them in those days. I could feel them in my heart, too. Last of all I got ill, and for a while was so weak and low they thought I was going to get out of the trial altogether.