‘Do you think, sir, it was paid agitators who kicked the thing off?’ he asked, his clothing a little disarranged, for he had been briefly manhandled by the crowd.

‘No, I do not,’ Alasdair replied shortly, and though they were hardly into George Street he signalled for the driver to stop and he turned his secretary out into the night to make his own way home.

Alasdair sat back in his seat but he was unsettled. This was not democracy; indeed, it was not the way of Australian men to care strongly enough about their politics to fight in the street. To take against those of a different race, yes, it was part of a man’s nature to do so, but Australian men were all of the same race, the same species, for the most part, if one ignored the obvious difference of Anglican and Papist, Englishman and Irish, rich and poor. He was unsettled, he was disappointed. Tonight it had been the Black Labour issue that had fuelled men’s tempers. The proposed dissolving of the barriers between the six colonies would trigger a flood of black workers from the north; Chinamen and men of the other Asian countries toiling in the comfortably distant northern cane fields were just waiting for their chance to swarm south. This was the prospect the anti-billites presented. The white men in the southern colonies would be put out of work at best, overrun and diluted at worst, and it was an easy fear for the anti-billites to fan, for all white men did fear this, though the more rational ones among them saw it for what it was: a baseless fear fanned by a scared opponent.

And was it fear, above all else, that drove men? Alasdair wondered.

The moon had climbed above the rooftops and bats circled, twittering excitedly in its glow. Above him the cab driver made clicking noises with his tongue to encourage his reluctant horse, and the cab stopped and started, lurching alarmingly as it failed to negotiate a pothole in the street and Alasdair experienced each sound, each vibration magnified tenfold. It was disagreeable to be in a cab going home in the dark with a distinct chill in the air and he wished to be free of it, but instead of being cheered as the cab began its descent to the bay an oppression came over him. He called out to the driver to stop and let him out. He would walk the remainder of the way down the hill. He tossed a coin at the man and set off.

But his footsteps slowed as he approached the house.

The oppression came over him, it consumed him.