began to master him.

"Seems to me I am always coming back to the place I start from," he
thought, with a desperate sense of helplessness; "but there isn't a
bit of difference between these hateful trees. I'll mark one and
try."

He cut a deep gash in the bark of the nearest to him, and went on.
But though he watched most carefully, he never came on that tree
again.

"As I'm not getting out," he reflected, "I must be getting deeper
and deeper into the scrub. Oh, what shall I do--what shall I do?
What a silly fool I have been! I might have remembered father's
warnings. Bob said one ought to learn to think out all sides of a
question. I didn't; and now if father goes back I shan't be there
to tell him I heard the coo-ee. Oh dear, oh dear!"

He gave a gasping sigh, almost a sob. To have been so near saving
Bob, and not to have done it after all--only to die "bushed"! It
was enough to break a man's nerve, let alone a child's.

He went back in thought to the river bank, picturing how it would
have been if he had only patiently waited, giving a coo-ee now and
again to keep in touch with the answerer.

"Why, how silly I am!" he exclaimed. "If I coo-ee now he will
answer me, and I can follow that."

The thought cheered him instantly, and making a hollow mouthpiece
with his hands to increase the sound, he gave the loudest coo-ee he
had ever given in his life.

There was not the faintest response.

Again and again he repeated it, straining his ears to hear if there
came a reply. More and more agonized grew his cries; so intense his
silences between that he even stopped his breathing to listen. But
there was nothing to hear. He got hot and cold by turns; he felt
sick and queer. It was now hours since his departure from the
Highlands, and he had had no food since the very poor supper he
managed to eat the night before. The effort of shouting did not
improve matters, and he was so hoarse at last he could call no
more.

Then he completely lost his head, and began riding with desperate
inconsequence as straight ahead as the trees would allow. Stay
still he could not; the inaction terrified him. He argued that he
must get somewhere by going on long enough--somewhere "through to
the other side," as he expressed it.

"Why doesn't Bob answer?" that was the most troublesome thought.
"Have I got out of earshot?"

Presently Eustace was beyond thinking; he went on dully because he
felt he must keep on the move; but hunger, e