“We may as well have it out now what lay we’re going upon and whether we’re all agreed in our minds to turn out, and do the thing in the regular good old-fashioned Sydneyside style. It’s risky, of course, and we’re sure to have a smart brush or two; but I’m not going to be jugged again, not if I know it, and I don’t see but what bush-ranging—yes, bush-ranging, it’s no use saying one thing and meaning another—ain’t as safe a game, let alone the profits of it, as mooching about cattle-duffing and being lagged in the long-run all the same.”

Chapter XXIII

CHAPTER XXIII

“Because it’s too late,” growled father; “too late by years. It’s sink or swim with all of us. If we work together we may make ten thousand pounds or more in the next four or five years, enough to clear out with altogether if we’ve luck. If any of us goes snivelling in now and giving himself up, they’d know there’s something crooked with the lot of us, and they’ll run us down somehow. I’ll see ‘em all in the pit of h--l before I give in, and if Jim does, he opens the door and sells the pass on us. You can both do what you like.” And here the old man walked bang away and left us.

“No use, Dick,” says Jim. “If he won’t it’s no use my giving in. I can’t stand being thought a coward. Besides, if you were nabbed afterwards people might say it was through me. I’d sooner be killed and buried a dozen times over than that. It’s no use talking—it isn’t to be—we had better make up our minds once for all, and then let the matter drop.”

Poor old Jim. He had gone into it innocent from the very first. He was regular led in because he didn’t like to desert his own flesh and blood, even if it was wrong. Bit by bit he had gone on, not liking or caring for the thing one bit, but following the lead of others, till he reached his present pitch. How many men, and women, too, there are in the world who seem born to follow the lead of others for good or evill They get drawn in somehow, and end by paying the same penalty as those that meant nothing else from the start.