d by a gigantic monkey, the fraud would be discovered, and
then the inhabitants would deal in their own gentle, characteristic way
with the man who had been party to Professor Thunder's shocking
imposition. Two days earlier Tollbar had patronised the museum.

These cheerful thoughts occupied Nickie's mind while the mare was
negotiating about five miles, and wearing much of the wool off Mahdi, and
not a little cuticle off Mr. Crips; but he was saved the dread ordeal he
anticipated by another disaster. The mare caught a hoof in a rut and came
down heavily, and presently Nickie recovered consciousness, lying on his
back, blinking at the blue sky, gratified to find that he was not dead.

The mare was out of sight, and the Missing Link was at large in the bush,
with a damaged head, a sprained ankle, a cracked rib, and a pain in every
limb. He arose and shook some, of the dust off himself, and then limped
from the road and sat in the shade of a tree, with his back to the butt,
to consider his lamentable situation and feel his injuries.

Nickie's position was certainly an unpleasant one. He could not walk back
to Bullfrog, because he would be certain to meet people by the way, and
the sight of a Missing Link prowling in the Australian hush might lead to
disaster. In any case, the sprained ankle made a five-mile walk
impossible. Nickie could not strip off his monkey make-up, because of the
very scanty undergarments he possessed.

"What the deuce am I to do now?" groaned the victim, gently chafing his
bruises.

He was answered by a shrill scream, an energetic and most piercing
feminine yell of terror, and lifting his startled eyes he beheld a young
girl, clad after the manner of a settler's daughter, standing a few yards
away, staring at him with wild horrified eyes. The girl's fingers were
clutching her hair, her face was white, her limbs convulsed, she seemed
glued to the spot, incapable of movement, but power of screaming remained
with her, and she exerted it to the utmost--she screamed, and screamed,
and screamed again, the bush resounded with the echoes of her agonised
cries.

For a moment Nickie stared back in blank surprise. It had not struck him
that he was the occasion of this frantic demonstration, but presently he
realised that a little screaming was excusable in an excitable young lady
coming suddenly upon a full-grown missing link drowsing under the gums in
her native bush.

Nickie arose, he advanced a step.