yet."

"The few you have given me have been sufficiently vivid to count
for a good many though," said the girl merrily. "I don't know that
I really want any more."

"One doesn't always want what is good for one," said Bob. "Besides,
there is another way of looking at it--isn't there, Nesta? It has
been proved you are a witch. You ought to be brought back by main
force to be punished for whisking these good people all off to
England with you."

"So she ought," said Nesta gleefully. "She must be burned at the
stake. We'll make you come."

"We will, Aunt Dorothy," cried Peter, ready for the fray; "and if
you won't, we'll get Bob to come and fetch you."

"Will you really, Peter Perky?" retorted Aunt Dorothy. "I should
like to see you. Why, Mr. Cochrane wouldn't set his nose inside
England for all the witches in the world."

"Well, no, perhaps not for all the witches in the world," said Bob
thoughtfully; "they might prove rather too much for me. But what a
lot of nonsense we talk, to be sure."

The nonsense had the effect of sending Miss Chase to bed quite
unusually meditative, and, do what she would, she could not get off
to sleep for wondering whether she ever would come back to
Queensland again. It seemed of all things most impossible, and yet,
as she argued, who would ever have thought of her coming at all
this time only a year ago?

She had become accustomed to most of the night sounds that had at
first puzzled and sometimes frightened her, and by day there was
something about the life that delighted her--it was so free, such
an open air existence! "They seem to me to sweep all their worries
with the dust over the edge of the veranda," she thought. "I think
England will feel a little stiff and shut in after it."

It was a bright moonlight night. A deluded cock at about midnight
awoke and fancied it must be day. He crowed so loudly over his
discovery that he roused a great enemy of his, who replied in husky
irritation and no measured terms that he was a fool. But the
mischief was done--some half-dozen young cockerels took the matter
up as a joke, and crowed persistently in spite of all remonstrance
from the rest of the poultry.

Miss Chase put her head under the bedclothes and tried to shut out
the sound, but in vain. Besides, it was far too hot to sleep with a
buried nose and mouth. Resolutely keeping her eyes tight shut, she
set her mind upon nothing but sleep. She must have lain like that
for quite ten