Page:The Gully of Bluemansdyke.djvu/113

 Rh he knew me well enough never to give me the chance. It was more then I could stand any longer, so I went right up to him and drew him aside, where we'd be free from all the loungers and theatre-goers.

"How long are you going to keep it up?" I asked him.

He seemed a bit flustered for a moment, but then he saw there was no use beating about the bush, so he answered straight—

"Until you go back to Australia," he said.

"Don't you know," I said, "that I have served the government and got a free pardon?"

He grinned all over his ugly face when I said this.

"We know all about you, Maloney," he answered. "If you want a quiet life, just you go back where you came from. If you stay here, you're a marked man; and when you are found tripping it'll be a lifer for you, at the least. Free trade's a fine thing, but the market's too full of men like you for us to need to import any!"

It seemed to me that there was something in what he said, though he had a nasty way of putting it. For some days back I'd been feeling a sort of