A wave of laughter passed over the hall.
"But most of us here haven't any fancy for starving, and what's more, nobody has ever starved on the Ridge. I don't say that we haven't had hard times, that we haven't gone on short commons--we have; but we haven't starved, and we're not going to....
"This talk of buying up the mines comes at the only time it would have been listened to in the last half-dozen years. It hits us when we're down, in a way; but the slump'll pass. There've been slumps before, and they've passed.... Mr. Armitage thinks so, or he wouldn't be so keen on getting hold of the mines.
"And as to production of stone and development of the mines, it seems to me we can do more ourselves than any Proprietary Company, Ltd., or syndicate ever made could. Didn't old Mr. Armitage, himself, say once that he didn't know a better conducted or more industrious mining community than this one. 'Why d'y' think that is?' I asked him. He said he didn't know. I said, 'You don't think the way the men feel about their work's got anything to do with it?' 'Damn it, Michael,' he said, 'I don't want to think so.'
"And I happen to know"--Michael smiled slightly towards John Armitage, who was gazing at him with tense features and hands tightly folded and crossed under his chin--"that the old man is opposed even now to this scheme because he thinks he won't get as much black opal out of us as he does under our own way of doing things. He remembers the Cliffs, and what taking over of the mines did for opal--and the men--there. This scheme is Mr. John Armitage's idea....
"He's put it to you. You've heard what it is. All I've got to say now is, don't touch it. Don't have anything to do with it.... It'll break us ... the spirit of the men here ... and it'll break what we've been working on all these years. If it means throwing that up, don't let us see which side our bread's buttered on, as Mr. M'Ginnis says. Let us say like we always have--like we've been proud to say: 'We'll eat bread and fat, but we'll be our own masters!'"
"We'll eat bread and fat, but we'll be our own masters!" the men who were with Michael roared.
He sat down amid cheers. George and Watty turned in their seats to beam at him, filled with rejoicing.
Armitage rose from his chair and shifted his papers as though he had not quite decided what he intended to say.
"I'm not going to ask this meeting for a decision," he began.
"You can have it!" Bully Bryant yelled.
"There's a bit of a rush at Blue Pigeon Creek, and I'm going on up there," John Armitage continued. "I'm due in Sydney at the end of the month--that is, a month from this date--and I'll run up then for your answer to the proposition which has been laid before you. I have said all there is to say about it, except that, notwithstanding anything which may have been asserted to the contrary, I hope you will give your gravest consideration to an enterprise, I am convinced, would be in the best interests of this town and of the people of Fallen Star Ridge. I think, however, you ought to know----"
"That Michael Brady's a liar and a thief!" Charley cried, springing from his corner as if loosed from some invisible leash. "If you believe him, you're believing a liar and a thief. Mr. Armitage knows ... I know ...
and Paul knows----"
"Throw him out."
"He's mad!"
The cries rose in a tumult of angry voices. When they were at their height M'Ginnis was seen on his feet and waving his arms.
"Let him say what he's got to!" he shouted. "You chaps know as well as I do what's been going the rounds, and we might as well have it out now.
If it's not true, Michael'd rather have the strength of it, and give you his answer ... and if there is anything in it, we've got a right to know."
"That's right!" some of the men near him chorused.
Newton looked towards George, and George towards Michael.
"Might as well have it," Michael said.
Charley, who had been hustled against the wall by Potch and Bully Bryant, was loosed. He moved a few steps forward so that everyone could see him, and breathlessly, shivering, in a frenzy of triumphant malice, told his story. Rouminof, carried away by excitement, edged alongside him, chiming into what he was saying with exclamations and chippings of corroboration.
When Charley had finished talking and had fallen back exhausted, Armitage left his chair as if to continue what he had been going to say when Charley took the floor. Instead, he hesitated, and, feeling his way through the silence of consternation and dismay which had stricken everybody, said uncertainly:
"Much as I regret having to do so, I consider it my duty to state that Charley Heathfield's story, as far as I know it, is substantially correct. Some time ago I was sold a stone in New York. As soon as he saw it, my father said, 'Why, that's Michael's mascot.' I asked him if he were sure, and he declared that he could not be mistaken about the stone....
"I told him the story I had got with it. Charley has already told you.
That stone came from a parcel Charley supposed contained Rouminof's opals--the one Paul got when Jun Johnson and he had a run of luck together. The parcel did not contain Rouminof's opals, and had been exchanged for the parcel which did, either while Rouminof and Charley were going home together or after he had taken them from Rouminof. My father refused to believe that Michael Brady had anything to do with the business. I made further inquiries, and satisfied myself that the man who had always seemed to me the soul of honour and a pattern of the altruistic virtues, I must confess, was responsible for placing that stone in the parcel Charley took down to Sydney ... and also that Michael had possession of Rouminof's opals. Mrs. Johnson will swear she saw Rouminof's stones on the table of Michael Brady's hut one evening nearly two years ago.
"I approached Michael myself to try to discover more of the stones. He denied all knowledge of them. But now, before you all, and because it seems to me an outrageous thing for people to ruin themselves on account of their belief in a man who is utterly unworthy of it, I accuse Michael Brady of having stolen Rouminof's opals. If he has anything to say, now is the time to say it."
What Armitage said seemed to have paralysed everybody. The silence was heavier, more dismayed than it had been a few minutes before. Nobody spoke nobody moved. Michael's friends sat with hunched shoulders, not looking at each other, their gaze fixed ahead of them, or on the place where Michael was sitting, waiting to see his face and to hear the first sound of his voice. Potch, who had gone to hold his father back when Charley had made his attack on Michael, stood against the wall, his eyes on Michael, his face illumined by the fire of his faith. His glance swept the crowd as if he would consign it to perdition for its doubt and humiliation of Michael. The silence was invaded by a stir of movement, the shuffle of feet. People began to mutter and whisper together. Still Michael did not move. George Woods turned round to him.
"For God's sake speak, Michael," he said. Michael did not move.
Then from the back of the hall marched Snow-Shoes. Tall and stately, he strode up the narrow passage between the rows of seats wedged close together. People watched him with an abstract curiosity, their minds under the shadow of the accusation against Michael, waiting only to hear what he would say to it. When Snow-Shoes reached the top of the hall he turned and faced the men He held up a narrow package wrapped in newspaper and before them all handed it to Rouminof, who was still hovering near the edge of the platform.
"Your stones," he said. "I took them." And in the same stately, measured fashion he had entered, he walked out of the hall again.
Cheers resounded, cheers on cheers, until the roof rang. There was no hearing anything beyond cheers and cries for Michael. People crushed round him shaking his hand, clinging to him, tears in their eyes. When order was achieved again, it was found that Paul was on the platform going over the stones with Armitage, Newton looking on. Paul was laughing and crying; he had forgotten Charley, forgotten everything but his joy in fingering his lost gems.
When there was a lull in the tempest of excitement and applause, Armitage spoke.
"I've got to apologise to you, Michael," he said. "I do most contritely.... I don't yet understand--but the facts are, the opals are here, and Mr. Riley has said--"
Michael stood up. His mouth moved and twisted as though he were going to speak before his voice was heard. When it was, it sounded harsh and as if only a great effort of will drove it from him.
"I want to say," he said, "I did take those stones ... not from Paul ...
but from Charley."
His words went through the heavy quiet slowly, a vibration of his suffering on every one of them. He told how he had seen Charley and Paul going home together, and how he had seen Charley take the package of opals from Rouminof's pocket and put them in his own.
"I didn't want the stones," Michael cried, "I didn't ever want them for myself.... It was for Paul I took them back, but I didn't want him to have them just then...."
Haltingly, with the same deadly earnestness, he went over the promise he had made to Sophie's mother, and why he did not want Paul to have the stones and to use them to take Sophie away from the Ridge. But she had gone soon after, and what he had done was of no use. When he explained why he had not then, at once, returned the opals he did not spare himself.
Paul had had sun-stroke; but Michael confessed that from the first night he had opened the parcel and had gone over the stones, he had been reluctant to part with them; he had found himself deferring returning them to Paul, making excuses for not doing so. He could not explain the thing to himself even.... He had not looked at the opals except once again, and then it was to see whether, in putting them away hurriedly the first time, any had tumbled out of the tin among his books. Then Potch and Maud had seen him. Afterwards he realised where he was drifting--how the stones were getting hold of him--and in a panic, knowing what that meant, he had gone for the parcel intending to take it to Paul at once and tell him how he, Michael, came to have anything to do with his opals, just as he was telling them. But the parcel was gone.
Michael said he could not think who had found it and taken it away; but now it was clear. Probably Snow-Shoes had known all the time he had the stones. The more he thought of it, the more Michael believed it must have been so. He remembered the slight stir on the shingly soil as he came from the hut on the night he had taken the opals from Charley. It was just that slight sound Snow-Shoes' moccasins made on the shingle.
Exclamations and odd queries Snow-Shoes had launched from time to time came back to Michael. He had no doubt, he said, that Mr. Riley had taken the stones to do just what he had done--and because he feared the influence possession of them was having on him, Michael, since they should have been returned to Paul long ago.
"That's the truth, as far as I know it," Michael said. "There's been attempts made to injure ... the Ridge, our way of doing things here, because of me, and because of those stones.... What happened to me doesn't matter. What happens to the Ridge and the mines does matter. I done wrong. I know I done wrong holding those stones. I'd give anything now if I--if I'd given them to Paul when Sophie went away. But I didn't ... and I'll stand by anything the men who've been my mates care to say or do about that. Only don't let the Ridge, and our way of doing things here, get hurt through me. That's bigger--it means more than any man.
Don't let it! ... I'd ask George to call a meeting, and get the boys to say what they think about all this--and where I stand."
Michael put on his hat, dragged it down over his eyes, and walked out of the hall.
When the slow fall of his footsteps no longer sounded on the wooden floor, George Woods rose from his place on the front bench. He turned and faced the men. The smoke from their smouldering pipes had created such a fog that he could see only the bulk of those on the near rows of forms. With the exception of M'Ginnis and half a dozen Punti men who had the far end of one of the front seats, the mass of men in the hall, who a few moments before had been cheering for Michael, were as inert as blown balloons. Depression was in every line of their heavy, squatted shapes and unlighted countenances.
"Well," George said, "it's been a bit of a shock what we've just heard.
It wasn't easy what Michael's just done ... and Snow-Shoes, if he'd wanted it, had provided the get-out. But Michael he wouldn't have it....
At whatever cost to himself, he wanted you to have the truth and to stand by the Ridge ... he'd stand by it at any cost.... If there's a doubt in anyone's mind as to what he is, what he's just done proves Michael. I don't say, as he says himself, that it wouldn't have been better if he had handed the stones over to Paul when Sophie went away ... but after all, what does that amount to as far as Michael's concerned? We've got his record, every one of us, his life here. Does anybody know a mean or selfish thing he's ever done, Michael?"
No one spoke, and George went on:
"Michael's asked for trial by his mates--and we've got to give it to him, if it's only to clear up the whole of this business and be done with it.... I move we meet here to-morrow night to settle the thing."
There was a rumbling murmur, and staccato exclamations of assent. Men in back seats moved to the door; others surged after them. Armitage and his proposals were forgotten.