As a man may walk unhurt amid a shower of bullets, he had walked unseen under twenty policemen's eyes.

From Castlereagh Street came a murmur of voices.

The theatres were out, and a huge crowd, fresh from the painted scenes and stale odours of the stalls and gallery, watched with hilarious interest the harlequinade on the roofs.

In half an hour a procession was formed, two deep, guarded by the police, and followed by a crowd stumbling over one another to keep pace with it, shouting words of encouragement and sympathy to the prisoners.

Five minutes later Chook slithered down a veranda post, a free man, and walked quietly to the tram..