A disintegrating influence was at work, Michael recognised. It had been active for some time. Since Potch's finding of the big stone, scarcely any stone worth speaking of had been unearthed on the fields, and that meant long store accounts, and anxious and hard times for most of the gougers.
The settlement had weathered seasons of dearth, and had existed on the merest traces of precious opal before; but this one had lasted longer, and had tried everybody's patience and capacity for endurance to the last degree. Murmurs of the need for money to prospect the field and open up new workings were heard. Criticisms of the ideas which would keep out money and money-owners who might be persuaded to invest their money to prospect and open up new workings on Fallen Star, crept into the murmurings, and had been circulating for some months. Bat M'Ginnis, a tall, lean, herring-gutted Irishman, with big ears, pointed like a bat's, was generally considered author of the criticisms and abettor of the murmurings. He had sunk on the Coolebah and drifted to the Punti rush soon after. On the Punti, it was known, he had expatiated on the need for business men and business methods to run the mines and make the most of the resources of the Ridge.
M'Ginnis was a good agent for Armitage, before Armitage's proposition was heard of. Michael wondered now whether he was perhaps an agent of Armitage's, and had been sent to the Ridge to prepare the way for John Armitage's scheme. When he came to think of it, Michael remembered he had heard men exclaim that Bat never seemed short of money himself, although if he had to live on what his claim produced he would have been as hard up as most of them. Michael wondered whether Charley's home-coming was a coincidence likewise, or whether Armitage had laid his plans more carefully than might have been imagined.
Michael saw no way out for himself. He could not accept Armitage's bribe of silence as to his share in the disappearance of Paul's opals, in order to urge men of the Ridge to agree to the Armitages' proposition for buying up the mines. If he could have, he realised, he would carry perhaps a majority of men of the Ridge with him; and those he cared most for would stand by the Ridge idea whether he deserted it or not, he believed. He would only fall in their esteem; they would despise him; and he would despise himself if he betrayed the idea on which he had staked so much, and the realisation of which he would have died to preserve. But there was no question of betraying the Ridge idea, or of being false to the teaching of his whole life. He was not even tempted by the terms Armitage offered for his co-operation. He was glad to think no terms Armitage could offer would tempt him from his allegiance to the principle which was the corner-stone of life on the Ridge.