bush, and she had run after it. When she found that
she could not catch the hare, she discovered that she could no longer
see the cottage. After wandering for a while she got frightened and ran,
and ran, little knowing that she was going further away from her home at
every step.

Where she was sitting under the blackbutt tree, she was miles away from
her father's selection, and it would be very difficult for anyone to
find her. She felt that she was a long way off, and she began to think
of what was happening at home. She remembered how, not very long ago, a
neighbour's little boy had been lost, and how his mother had come to
their cottage for help to find him, and that her father had ridden off
on the big bay horse to bring men from all the selections around to help
in the search. She remembered their coming back in the darkness; numbers
of strange men she had never seen before. Old men, young men, and boys,
all on their rough-coated horses, and how they came indoors, and what a
noise they made all talking together in their big deep voices. They
looked terrible men, so tall and brown and fierce, with their rough
bristly beards; and they all spoke in such funny tones to her, as if
they were trying to make their voices small.

During many days these men came and went, and every time they were more
sad, and less noisy. The little boy's mother used to come and stay,
crying, whilst the men were searching the bush for her little son. Then,
one evening, Dot's father came home alone, and both her mother and the
little boy's mother went away in a great hurry. Then, very late, her
mother came back crying, and her father sat smoking by the fire looking
very sad, and she never saw that little boy again, although he had been
found.

She wondered now if all these rough, big men were riding into the bush
to find her, and if, after many days, they would find her, and no one
ever see her again. She seemed to see her mother crying, and her father
very sad, and all the men very solemn. These thoughts made her so
miserable that she began to cry herself.

Dot does not know how long she was sobbing in loneliness and fear, with
her head on her knees, and with her little hands covering her eyes so as
not to see the cruel wild bush in which she was lost. It seemed a long
time before she summoned up courage to uncover her weeping eyes, and
look once more at the bare, dry earth, and the wilderness of scrub and
trees that seemed to close her