sooner! But whilst she was
picking the pretty flowers, a hare suddenly started at her feet and
sprang away into the bush, and she had run after it. When she found
that she could not catch the hare, she discovered that she could no
longer see the cottage. After wandering for a while she got frightened
and ran, and ran, little knowing that she was going further away from
her home at every step.

Where she was sitting under the blackbutt tree, she was miles away from
her father's selection, and it would be very difficult for anyone to
find her. She felt that she was a long way off, and she began to think
of what was happening at home. She remembered how, not very long ago,
a neighbour's little boy had been lost, and how his mother had come to
their cottage for help to find him, and that her father had ridden off
on the big bay horse to bring men from all the selections around to
help in the search. She remembered their coming back in the darkness;
numbers of strange men she had never seen before. Old men, young men,
and boys, all on their rough-coated horses, and how they came indoors,
and what a noise they made all talking together in their big deep
voices. They looked terrible men, so tall and brown and fierce, with
their rough bristly beards; and they all spoke in such funny tones to
her, as if they were trying to make their voices small.

During many days, these men came and went, and every time they were
more sad, and less noisy. The little boy's mother used to come and
stay, crying, whilst the men were searching the bush for her little
son. Then, one evening, Dot's father came home alone, and both her
mother and the little boy's mother went away in a great hurry. Then,
very late, her mother came back crying, and her father sat smoking by
the fire looking very sad, and she never saw that little boy again,
although he had been found.

She wondered now if all these rough, big men were riding into the bush
to find her, and if, after many days, they would find her, and no one
ever see her again. She seemed to see her mother crying, and her
father very sad, and all the men very solemn. These thoughts made her
so miserable that she began to cry herself.

Dot does not know how long she was sobbing in loneliness and fear, with
her head on her knees, and with her little hands covering her eyes so
as not to see the cruel wild bush in which she was lost. It seemed a
long time before she summoned up courage to un