第124章

There was Daly and Burke, Wall and Hulbert, and two or three more -- I won't say who they were now -- and if you please who should come out of the hut last but Master Billy the Boy, as impudent as you like, with a pipe in his mouth, and a revolver in his belt, trying to copy Moran and Daly.I felt sorry when I see him, and thought what he'd gradually come to bit by bit, and where he'd most likely end, all along of the first money he had from father for telegraphing.

But after all I've a notion that men and women grow up as they are intended to from the beginning.All the same as a tree from seed.

You may twist it this road or that, make it a bit bigger or smaller according to the soil or the way it's pruned and cut down when it's young, but you won't alter the nature of that tree or the fruit that it bears.

You won't turn a five-corner into a quince, or a geebung into an orange, twist and twine, and dig and water as you like.So whichever way Billy the Boy had been broken and named he'd have bolted and run off the course.Take a pet dingo now.He might look very tame, and follow them that feed him, and stand the chain; but as soon as anything passed close that he could kill, he'd have his teeth into it and be lapping its blood before you could say knife, and the older he got the worse he'd be.

`Well, Dick,' says this young limb of Satan, `so you've took to the Queen's highway agin, as the chap says in the play.I thought you and Jim was a-going to jine the Methodies or the Sons of Temperance at Turon, you both got to look so thunderin' square on it.Poor old Jim looks dreadful down in the mouth, don't he, though?'

`It would be all the better for you if you'd joined some other body, you young scamp,' I said.`Who told you to come here? I've half a mind to belt you home again to your mother;' and I walked towards him.

`No, you won't, Dick Marston, don't you make any mistake,'

says the young bull-pup, looking nasty.`I'm as good a man as you, with this little tool.' Here he pulled out his revolver.

`I've as much right to turn out as you have.What odds is it to you what I do?'

I looked rather foolish at this, and Moran and Burke began to laugh.

`You'd better set up a night-school, Dick,' says Burke, `and get Billy and some of the other flash kiddies to come.

They might turn over a new leaf in time.'

`If you'll stand up, or Moran there, that's grinning behind you, I'll make some of ye laugh on the wrong side,' I said.

`Come on,' drawls Moran, taking off his coat, and walking up;`I'd like to have a smack at you before you go into the Church.'

We should have been at it hammer and tongs -- we both hated one another like poison -- only the others interfered, and Billy said we ought to be ashamed of ourselves for quarrelling like schoolboys.

We were nice sort of chaps to stick up a gold escort.That made a laugh, and we knocked off.

Well, it looked as if no one wanted to speak.Then Hulbert, a very quiet chap, says, `I believe Ben Marston's the oldest man here;let's hear what he's got to say.'

Father gets up at once, and looks steady at the rest of 'em, takes his pipe out of his mouth, and shakes the baccy out.Then he says --`All on ye knows without my telling what we've come here about, and what there's hangin' to it.It's good enough if it's done to rights;but make no mistake, boys, it's a battle as must be fought game, and right back to the ropes, or not at all.If there's a bird here that won't stand the steel he'd better be put in a bag and took home again.'

`Never mind about the steel, daddy,' says one of the new men.