death. His wife was not able to induce their sons to aspire to anything
above the occupations of the class with which they had always associated,
so they were miners and stockmen with the rest. But the young men, even
as boys, noticed in their mother a refinement and a clearness of
intellect that were not characteristic of the women of Waddy; and out of
the love and veneration they bore her grew a sort of family pride--a
respect for their name that was quite a touch of old-worldly conceit in
this new land of devil-may-care, and gave them a certain distinction. It
was this that served largely to make the branding of Frank Hardy as a
thief a consuming shame to his brother. Harry thought of it less as a
wrong to Frank than as an outrage to his mother. It was this, too, that
made the young man burn to take the Sunday School superintendent by the
throat and lash him till he howled himself dumb in his own chapel.

Harry returned to his log in Wilson's back paddock again in the afternoon
to wrestle with his difficulties, and, with the gluttonous rosellas
swinging on the gum-boughs above, set himself to reconsider all that he
had heard of Frank's case and all the possibilities that had since
occurred to him. Here Dick Haddon discovered him at about four o'clock.
Dick was leading a select party at the time, with the intention of
reconnoitring old Jock Summers's orchard in view of a possible invasion
at an early date; but when he saw Harry in the distance he immediately
abandoned the business in hand. An infamous act of desertion like this
would have brought down contempt upon the head of another, and have
earned him some measure of personal chastisement; but Dick was a law unto
himself.

'So long, you fellows,' he said.

'Why, where yer goin'?' grunted Jacker Mack.