they came to the head of it, where it ended with pretty steep
banks all round. By that time they were thoroughly dazed, and there they
would have stayed until they were roasted. Sheep are stupid brutes at
any time, but in smoke they're just idiots!

"Norah gave only one look. Then she slipped off Bobs and left him to
look after himself, and she tore down into the gully."

"Oh, Jim, go on!" said Wally.

"I'm going," said Jim affably.

"Dad gave one shout as Norah disappeared into the gully. 'Go back, my
darling!' he yelled, forgetting that he was so far off that he might as
well have shouted to the moon. Then he gave a groan, and dug his spurs
into Bosun. I had mine as far as they'd go in Sirdar already!

"The smoke rolled on up the gully and in a minute it had covered it all
up. I thought it was all up with Norah, too, and old Burrows behind me
was sobbing for all he was worth. We raced and tore and yelled!

"Then we saw a sheep coming up out of the smoke at the end of the gully.
Another followed, and another, and then more, until every blessed one of
the twenty was there (though we didn't stop to count 'em then, I can
tell you!) Last of all--it just seemed years--came Norah!

"We could hear her shouting at the sheep before we saw her. They were
terribly hard to move. She banged them with sticks, and the last old ram
she fairly kicked up the hill. They were just out of the gully when the
fire roared up it, and a minute or so after that we got to her.

"Poor little kid; she was just black, and nearly blind with the smoke.
It was making her cry like fun," said Jim, quite unconscious of his
inappropriate simile. "I don't know if it was smoke in his case, but so
was Dad. We put the fire out quick enough; it was easy work to keep it
in the gully. Indeed, Dad never looked at the fire, or the sheep either.
He just jumped off Bosun, and picked Norah up and held her as if she was
a baby, and she hugged and hugged him. They're awfully fond of each
other, Dad and Norah."

"And were the sheep all right?" Harry asked.

"Right as rain; not one of the black-faced beauties singed. It was a
pretty close thing, you know," Jim said reminiscently. "The fire was
just up to Norah as she got the last sheep up the hill; there was a hole
burnt in the leg of her riding skirt. She told me afterwards she made up
her mind she was going to die down in that beastly hole."

"My word, you must have been jolly proud of her!" Wally exclaimed.