ts up. She was just going to suggest that they should give up and
rest supperless for the night when they heard a faint "coo-ee," and even
more faintly the plodding sound of a horse's steps. Louis excitedly gave
an answering shout, and in a few minutes they saw a horse looming
through the darkness.

"What a good job I've found you," came a boy's voice, and they saw a
small figure standing beside them, reaching about to the horse's
shoulder.

"Were you looking for us?" said Marcella. "And are we found? We don't
seem to be anywhere."

"I was looking for the sheep. I came across twenty back there,
suffocated with the dust. I don't know what he'll say when he knows! But
it's a good thing I found you, else you'd have gone on all night."

He turned then, and they followed him. He said nothing more until after
about two miles of silent tramping they turned the corner of a high
fence threaded with wonga-vine, and saw the lights of a homestead.
Marcella felt she understood fire-and sun-worshippers. She could
cheerfully have worshipped the twinkling light.

A dog began to bark excitedly; half a dozen children, with one unsexed
garment shaped like a bathing-dress each, turned out to stare at them.
A man of fifty or thereabouts, with a thin, rather tragic face came
along the low verandah built all along the front of the Homestead, and
looked at them enquiringly.

"Were you in that storm, chum?" he asked. Louis nodded.

"Come right in! What, got a girl with you, too? Enough to finish you
off! Mother!" he added, raising his voice, "Here's a young woman come to
see us."

A little meek woman in a faded blue frock came out on to the verandah.

"Wherever have you come from?" she asked. They explained, and she seemed
to do ten things at once, while they were speaking. Louis was
irresistibly reminded of a music-hall _prestidigitateur_. She was giving
directions for more chops to be put into the frying-pan, clean water to
be fetched from the creek and put in a kerosene tin in "Jerry's room," a
cloth laid over the bare boards of the already prepared table, and a tin
of jam found from the store. Marcella felt at home at once. It was the
simple, transparent welcome of Lashnagar again.

The architecture of Loose End was entirely the invention of John Twist.
It consisted of a chain of eight rooms. As the family grew, another room
was leaned against the last one. One of the boys at Gaynor's had been
heard to express the opinion that L