nd feet.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

SOMETIMES LOOKING EAGERLY ACROSS THE WATER AT THE
WAVING FOREST BOUGHS _Front._

AND THERE HE STOOD, NAKED AND FREE, ON THE FORBIDDEN
GROUND _Vignette._

"MOTHER, WHAT COUNTRY IS THAT ACROSS THE RIVER?" 15

A KANGAROO! A SNAKE! AN EAGLE! 21

HE WAS LOST IN THE BUSH 25

HE CAME ON THE BALD, THUNDER-SMITTEN SUMMIT RIDGE 29

"WE HAVE COME TO HELP YOU, MISTRESS" 33

THERE HE LAY, DEAD AND STIFF 39

THE LOST CHILD.

Remember? Yes, I remember well that time when the disagreement arose
between Sam Buckley and Cecil, and how it was mended. You are wrong
about one thing, General; no words ever passed between those two young
men: death was between them before they had time to speak.

I will tell you the real story, old as I am, as well as either of them
could tell it for themselves; and as I tell it I hear the familiar roar
of the old snowy river in my ears, and if I shut my eyes I can see the
great mountain, Lanyngerin, bending down his head like a thorough-bred
horse with a curb in his mouth; I can see the long grey plains, broken
with the outlines of the solitary volcanoes Widderin and Monmot. Ah,
General Halbert! I will go back there next year, for I am tired of
England, and I will leave my bones there; I am getting old, and I want
peace, as I had it in Australia. As for the story you speak of, it is
simply this:--

Four or five miles up the river from Garoopna stood a solitary hut,
sheltered by a lofty bare knoll, round which the great river chafed
among the boulders. Across the stream was the forest sloping down in
pleasant glades from the mountain; and behind the hut rose the plain
four or five hundred feet overhead, seeming to be held aloft by the
blue-stone columns which rose from the river-side.

In this cottage resided a shepherd, his wife, and one little boy, their
son, about eight years old,--a strange, wild little bush child, able to
speak articulately, but utterly without knowledge or experience of human
creatures, save of his father and mother; unable to read a line; without
re