found him--we got him
away--we had him first a hopeless invalid--he is now rapidly becoming a
strong healthy man."

"Healthy!"

"In body, boy. Recollect that for years he seems to have been kept
chained up by the savages like some wild beast, perhaps through some
religious scruples against destroying the life of a white man who was
wise in trees and plants. Likely enough they feared that if they killed
such a medicine-man it might result in a plague or curse."

"That is why they spared us both," said Mr Francis, who had heard the
latter part of our conversation; "and the long course of being kept
imprisoned there seemed to completely freeze up his brain as it did
mine. That and the fever and blows I received," he said excitedly.
"There were times when--"

He clapped his hands to his head as if he dared not trust himself to
speak, and turned away.

"Yes, that is it, my lad," said the doctor quietly; "his brain has
become paralysed as it were. A change may come at any time. Under the
circumstances, in spite of your mother's anxiety, we'll wait and go
slowly homeward. Let me see," he continued, turning to a little
calendar he kept, "to-morrow begins the tenth month of our journey.
Come, be of good heart. We've done wonders; nature will do the rest."

Two days later we had come to a halt in a lovely little glen through
which trickled a clear spring whose banks were brilliant with flowers.
We were all busy cooking and preparing to halt there for the night. My
father had walked the whole of the morning, and now had wandered slowly
away along the banks of the stream, Mr Francis being a little further
on, while Jimmy was busy standing beside a pool spearing fish.

I glanced up once or twice to see that my father was standing motionless
on the bank, and then I was busying myself once more cutting soft boughs
to make a bed when Jimmy came bounding up to me with his eyes starting
and mouth open.

"Where a gun, where a gun?" he cried. "Big bunyip down 'mong a trees,
try to eat Jimmy. Ask for um dinner, all aloud, oh."

"Hush! be quiet!" I cried, catching his arm; "what do you mean?"

"Big bunyip down 'mong stones say, `Hoo! much hungry; where my boy?'"

"Some one said that?" I cried.

"Yes, `much hungry, where my boy?' Want eat black boy; eat Jimmy!"

"What nonsense, Jimmy!" I said. "Don't be such a donkey. There are no
bunyips."

"Jimmy heard um say um!" he cried, stamping his spear on the ground.