s bosom, and eats a leaf as they go along; while
his mother sits aloft, and grunts indignant at the abstraction of her
offspring, but, on the whole, takes it pretty comfortably, and goes on
with her dinner of peppermint leaves.

What a short day it has been! Here is the sun getting low, and the
magpies and jackasses beginning to tune up before roosting.

He would turn and go back to the river. Alas! which way?

He was lost in the bush. He turned back and went, as he thought, the way
he had come, but soon arrived at a tall, precipitous cliff, which, by
some infernal magic, seemed to have got between him and the river. Then
he broke down, and that strange madness came on him which comes even
on strong men when lost in the forest; a despair, a confusion of
intellect, which has cost many a man his life. Think what it must be
with a child!

[Illustration: _He was lost in the Bush._]

He was fully persuaded that the cliff was between him and home, and that
he must climb it. Alas! every step he took aloft carried him further
from the river and the hope of safety; and when he came to the top, just
at dark, he saw nothing but cliff after cliff, range after range, all
around him. He had been wandering through steep gullies all day
unconsciously, and had penetrated far into the mountains. Night was
coming down, still and crystal clear, and the poor little lad was far
away from help or hope, going his last long journey alone.

Partly perhaps walking, and partly sitting down and weeping, he got
through the night; and when the solemn morning came up, again he was
still tottering along the leading range, bewildered; crying, from time
to time, "Mother, mother!" still nursing his little bear, his only
companion, to his bosom, and holding still in his hand a few poor
flowers he had gathered the day before. Up and on all day, and at
evening, passing out of the great zone of timber, he came on the bald,
thunder-smitten summit ridge, where one ruined tree held up its skeleton
arms against the sunset, and the wind came keen and frosty. So, with
failing, feeble legs, upward still, towards the region of the granite
and the snow; towards the eyrie of the kite and the eagle.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _He came on the bald, thunder-smitten summit ridge._]

Brisk as they all were at Garoopna, none were so brisk as Cecil and Sam.
Charles Hawker wanted to come with them, but Sam asked him to go with
Jim; and,