d she had said it all the time, just as women always do!

So we walked and walked, but we never came to that old road again. Once
I thought I'd found it, but it was only some open, flat, thorny ground.
It was very dark then, the dark comes on so fast here. Suddenly we both
began to run as hard as we could, hand in hand; I don't know why,
something set us off and I felt just as if I must, and I suppose Joyce
did too, and then--crash!--before we knew where we were--smash!--we were
flying, slipping, tobogganing down through some bushes, with our feet
shooting out under us, and at last we reached the bottom. It was a steep
gully, a kind of nullah. When we did get down we arrived separately, for
we had had to let go to save ourselves. I was awfully sore, I know, and
I wondered what had happened to her, being a girl and so much softer.
But she didn't seem to mind much, for when I sang out, she answered
quite cheerfully, "I'm sitting in the middle of a bramble bush like a
bumble-bee. Do they sit in bushes, though? I think I'm getting a little
mixed!"

A girl like that is a jolly good pal, I can tell you!

It was a snaky place and that is what I was afraid of. We trod carefully
along the bottom and made noises to scare them off. Then I had a happy
thought; I had a box of matches with me, and I kept on striking them
till we found a handful of dry twigs which burnt up finely. It was so
still there that they blazed straight and steady, and I used them as a
torch and flourished them about low down as we walked.

I don't know if we really did see any snakes. Joyce is quite positive
she counted fourteen, sliding away in front of the light at different
times; but then she sees things much quicker than I do.

[Illustration: WE HAD TO PLUNGE THROUGH MARSHY GROUND.]

It took us a long time to get out of that nullah, and we tried all sorts
of different ways, but the sides were too steep. Often we had to stop to
get more twigs, and once, just as I had got a handful, Joyce said, "Why,
there are little plums growing on them." We ate quite a lot, and they
were refreshing and bitter, but it didn't mean much, for they were all
skin and stone.

The nullah sloped up at the end, and after a good deal of hard work I
hauled her up. It was jolly cold, I can tell you, and when we saw a
light moving about ahead we made a bee-line for it. Joyce thought it
was a will-o'-the-wisp; she had never seen one, but she had read of
them, and she said they