Explore "The Black Opal" by Katharine Susannah Prichard on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The men met to talk about Michael next evening. The meeting was informal, but every man on the fields had come to Fallen Star for it. The hall was filled to the doors as it had been the night before, but the crowd had none of the elastic excitement and fighting spirit, the antagonisms and enthusiasms, which had gone off from it in wavelike vibrations the night before. News of Arthur Henty's death had left everybody aghast, and awakened realisation of the abysses which even a life that seemed to move easily could contain. The shock of it was on everybody; the solemnity it had created in the air.
George Woods, elected spokesman for the men, and Roy O'Mara deputed to take notes of the meeting because he was reckoned to be a good penman, sat at a table on the platform. Michael took a chair just below the platform, facing the men. He was there to answer questions. No one had asked him to be present, but it was the custom when men of the Ridge were holding an inquiry of the sort for the man or men concerned to have seats in front of the platform, and Michael had gone to sit there as soon as the men were in their places.