tty children.

'You see,' said Mrs Head, taking the portraits eagerly, and giving them
to me one by one, 'we had these taken in Sydney some years before the
children were lost; they were much younger then. Wally's is not a good
portrait; he was teething then, and very thin. That's him standing on
the chair. Isn't the pose good? See, he's got one hand and one little
foot forward, and an eager look in his eyes. The portrait is very dark,
and you've got to look close to see the foot. He wants a toy rabbit that
the photographer is tossing up to make him laugh. In the next portrait
he's sitting on the chair--he's just settled himself to enjoy the fun.
But see how happy little Maggie looks! You can see my arm where I was
holding her in the chair. She was six months old then, and little Wally
had just turned two.'

She put the portraits up on the mantel-shelf.

'Let me see; Wally (that's little Walter, you know)--Wally was five and
little Maggie three and a half when we lost them. Weren't they, Walter?'

'Yes, Maggie,' said the Boss.

'You were away, Walter, when it happened.'

'Yes, Maggie,' said the Boss--cheerfully, it seemed to me--'I was away.'

'And we couldn't find you, Walter. You see,' she said to me, 'Walter--Mr
Head--was away in Sydney on business, and we couldn't find his address.
It was a beautiful morning, though rather warm, and just after the
break-up of the drought. The grass was knee-high all over the run. It
was a lonely place; there wasn't much bush cleared round the homestead,
just a hundred yards or so, and the great awful scrubs ran back from the
edges of the clearing all round for miles and miles--fifty or a hundred
miles in some directions without a break; didn't they, Walter?'

'Yes, Maggie.'

'I was alone at the house except for Mary, a half-caste girl we had, who
used to help me with the housework and the children. Andy was out on the
run with the men, mustering sheep; weren't you, Andy?'

'Yes, Mrs Head.'

'I used to watch the children close as they got to run about, because
if they once got into the edge of the scrub they'd be lost; but this
morning little Wally begged hard to be let take his little sister down
under a clump of blue-gums in a corner of the home paddock to gather
buttercups. You remember that clump of gums, Walter?'

'I remember, Maggie.'

'"I won't go through the fence a step, mumma," little Wally said. I
could see Old Peter--an old shepherd and station-hand we had-