her disgust, found that she was growing
drowsy too.

"This won't do!" she reflected, shaking herself. "If I go to sleep and
tumble off this old root I'll startle away all the fish in the creek."
She looked doubtfully at the still water, now and then rippled by the
splash of a leaping fish. "No good when they jump like that," said Norah
to herself. "I guess I'll go and explore."

She wound up her line quickly, and flung her bait to the lazy
inhabitants of the creek as a parting gift. Then, unnoticed by the boys,
she scrambled out of the tree and climbed up the bank, getting her blue
riding-skirt decidedly muddy--not that Norah's free and independent soul
had ever learned to tremble at the sight of muddy garments. She hid her
fishing tackle in a stump, and made her way along the bank.

A little farther up she came across black Billy--a very cheerful
aboriginal, seeing that he had managed to induce no less than nine
blackfish to leave their watery bed.

"Oh, I say!" said Norah, round-eyed and envious. "How do you manage it,
Billy? We can't catch one."

Billy grinned. He was a youth of few words.

"Plenty bob-um float," he explained lucidly. "Easy 'nuff. You try."

"No, thanks," said Norah, though she hesitated for a moment. "I'm sick
of trying--and I've no luck. Going to cook 'em for dinner, Billy?"

"Plenty!" assented Billy vigorously. It was his favourite word, and
meant almost anything, and he rarely used another when he could make it
suffice.

"That's a good boy," said Norah, approvingly, and black eighteen grinned
from ear to ear with pleasure at the praise of twelve-year-old white.
"I'm going for a walk, Billy. Tell Master Jim to coo-ee when lunch is
ready."

"Plenty," said Billy intelligently.

Norah turned from the creek and entered the scrub. She loved the bush,
and was never happier than when exploring its recesses. A born bushmaid,
she had never any difficulty about finding her way in the scrub, or of
retracing her steps. The faculty of bushmanship must be born in you; if
you have it not naturally, training very rarely gives it.

She rambled on aimlessly, noting, though scarcely conscious that she did
so, the bush sights and scenes on either hand--clinging creepers and
twining plants, dainty ferns, nestling in hollow trees, clusters of
maidenhair under logs; pheasants that hopped noiselessly in the shade,
and a wallaby track in some moist, soft earth. Once she saw a carpet
snake lying coiled in a