"Oh, look here," said a voice from the background, "that won't
wash. Why, don't you know that when the Bourke people die they send
back for their blankets?"

The saved brother glared round.

"I hear a freethinker speaking, my friends," he said. Then, with
sudden inspiration and renewed energy, "I hear the voice of a
freethinker. Show me the face of a freethinker," he yelled, glaring
round like a hunted, hungry man. "Show me the face of a freethinker,
and I'll tell you what he is."

Watty hitched himself into a more comfortable position and clasped his
hands on his knee and closed his eyes again.

"Ya-a-a-s!" shrieked the brand. "I tell you, my friends, I can
tell a freethinker by his face. Show me the face of a---"

At this point there was an interruption. One-eyed, or Wall-eyed,
Bogan, who had a broken nose, and the best side of whose face was
reckoned the ugliest and most sinister--One-eyed Bogan thrust his face
forward from the ring of darkness into the torchlight of salvation.
He had got the worst of a drawn battle; his nose and mouth were
bleeding, and his good eye was damaged.

"Look at my face!" he snarled, with dangerous earnestness. "Look
at my face! That's the face of a freethinker, and I don't care who
knows it. Now! what have you got to say against my face,
`Man-without-a-Shirt?'"