unsociable sort of man, and it didn't make any difference to the chaps
whether he had a union ticket or not. It was pretty well known in the shed
-- there were three or four chaps from the district he was reared in --
that he'd done five years hard for burglary. What surprised me
was that Jack Mitchell seemed thick with him; often, when the Lachlan
was sitting brooding and smoking by himself outside the hut after sunset,
Mitchell would perch on his heels alongside him and yarn.
But no one else took notice of anything Mitchell did out of the common.

"Better camp with us till the cool of the evening," said Mitchell
to the Lachlan, as they slipped their swags. "Plenty time for you to start
after sundown, if you're going to travel to-night."

So the Lachlan was going to travel all night and on a different track.
I felt more comfortable, and put the billy on. I did not care so much
what he'd been or had done, but I was green and soft yet,
and his presence embarrassed me.

They talked shearing, sheds, tracks, and a little unionism --
the Lachlan speaking in a quiet voice and with a lot of sound, common sense,
it seemed to me. He was tall and gaunt, and might have been thirty,
or even well on in the forties. His eyes were dark brown and deep set,
and had something of the dead-earnest sad expression you saw
in the eyes of union leaders and secretaries -- the straight men
of the strikes of '90 and '91. I fancied once or twice I saw in his eyes
the sudden furtive look of the "bad egg" when a mounted trooper
is spotted near the shed; but perhaps this was prejudice.
And with it all there was about the Lachlan something of the man
who has lost all he had and the chances of all he was ever likely to have,
and is past feeling, or caring, or flaring up -- past getting mad