rail of the corral; meantime she took an interested
survey of the stuffed clothes of Mr. Pete Harding under whose manly
presentment the lambs enjoyed protection. Mr. Brown had made a very
good imitation of a man by filling the herder's working-clothes with
marsh grass; the figure had been made to stand up by means of a pole
thrust through the fence, to the end of which Mr. Harding was suspended
by the neck as if he had been hung in effigy. The man himself had not
yet put in his appearance. Janet, as she thought of him, scanned the
horizon for signs of his approach. There was no indication of his
coming. But still the day was not half over; possibly, she told
herself, he would arrive early in the afternoon. Having become
satisfied that all was well, so far as the lambs were concerned, she
put up the top bar and went forth again to her work.

By looking back occasionally and sighting her route by means of the
shack and the storm-shed, the relative positions of which she had been
careful to observe when she first went out, she held her course so well
that when she next came in sight of the line of trees she was at the
same point as before. Here she set straight out for the bend in the
creek, which landmark was to guide her on the next stage of her quest.
As before, she kept a sharp lookout for stranded sheep.

She had not gone a great distance when another case presented itself.
This time it was twins. The pair were sleeping. The mother, having
licked them nicely into shape, had lain down beside them; when Janet
arrived she got up suddenly and stared at her in alarm. The twins had
evidently been successful, so far, in all their undertakings, not the
least of which is to take a rest. They were in very good condition to
be carried. She took them up and arranged them comfortably, one on
each arm, and soon they were on their way to safety, the anxious mother
trotting first to one side of Janet and then to the other. These also
were added to the ones in the corral.

Janet did not feel so tired but that she could have turned about at
once; she would have done so had it not been that it was dinner-time
and she was hungry. Mr. Brown had taken along with him an extra large
lunch which he expected her to share with him somewhere along the
shaded banks of the Comanche; the little plan passed momentarily
through her mind as she raised the lid of the box and took out a pan of
beans. There was also a piece of bread left