gether half in the water.
The man was motionless, and apparently dead; but the horse was still
faintly struggling, trying to keep its head above the surface.

"That must be one of the bushrangers," I exclaimed.

"No doubt about it," said Burton; "but how he came to fall over the
cliff it is hard to say."

"Can we not reach him and see if he is still alive?" I asked.

"No man could have fallen from that height and kept the breath in his
body," said Ned; "nor, indeed, escape breaking all his bones, unless he
had come down on the top of his horse. Depend on it, he's dead; and so
will the poor horse be in another moment--see! its head has already sunk
under the water. If we hadn't to look for the children we might try to
get at him; but it would lose much time, and we might chance also to
injure the boat."

"By all means then let us pull on, and continue our search for Edith and
Pierce," I answered; and we again took to our oars.

Evening was now drawing rapidly on. In vain we searched the coast as
far as our eyes could reach. As we pulled under the cliffs I shouted my
brother and sister's names, but only the echo of my voice came back
faintly to our ears. I became more and more alarmed, and it seemed to
me as if their doom was pronounced, when Burton declared that we must
pull back, as it was not likely they could have got so far. Harry
showed that he was as unhappy as I was, and joined his voice with mine
in shouting out their names as we made our way towards the mouth of the
river.

There was scarcely sufficient daylight to enable us to distinguish the
entrance. We got safely over the bar, however, and as fast as we could
move our oars we pulled up to the encampment. My father and his party
had just returned. He was, of course, very much alarmed at the
disappearance of my brother and sister. Nokes had discovered no traces
of them, still he affirmed that he had seen them go in that direction.
One thing was certain,--that it would be useless to attempt continuing
our search during the hours of darkness.

That was indeed a miserable night. My father did his utmost to comfort
my poor mother, but she could not fail to dread the worst. Our anxiety
about them made us scarcely think of the visit of the bushrangers. On
examining our stores, however, it was seen that they had carried off a
considerable quantity of powder and shot, and numerous other articles
which were likely to prove useful to them in their