The loafers at the bar all came out to see the start.

The family on the top of the bullock-dray peered forth from under the tilt.

The barkeeper shouted, 'Good luck to you and your lady, Mr McKeith.' The drunken reprobates, awakened from their slumber on the boards, called out, too, 'Goo-luksh!' There was an attempt at a cheer, but before McKeith had got out his answering, 'Thank ye--Good day, mates,' a shower of opprobrious epithets rained upon him from a little band of discontented bush rowdies--the advance guard of that same Union delegate who had come up with them in the train from Leuraville.
Three of these men lurched on to the bar veranda, and, so to speak, took the stage.

In front was a stumpily-built bullock driver with a red, truculent face, a ragged carrotty beard and inflamed narrow-ridded eyes.

A little to the rear stood a lanky, muscular bushman in very dirty moleskins, with a smooth loose-lipped face, no eyelashes, and a scowling forehead, who was evidently the worse for drink; next to him, a shorter man of the drover type, older, eagle-beaked and with sinister, foxy eyes.