Yes; if she had only known in the autumn what the spring would bring forth!
It was a very successful day, so everyone declared over the quart-pot tea. Mrs. Jem had provided cream and sugar for those who had not Mr. Micawber's sense of the fitting in regard to a colonial life. Some of the black boys, with Sam Shehan, had been sent forward towards the Baròlin Falls early in the day to prospect for the adventurous as to the state of the track. They brought back accounts so daunting, of the quicksands in the creek, made more dangerous by the late rains, of the density of the spinnifex, through which it was almost impossible to force a way, of the close growth of the prickly bunyas in the scrub, and of the far-famed and almost fabulous "piora" snake, said to pursue its victim, unlike its lethargic brethren, and to haunt these fastnesses of the Luya, which so frightened Miss Garfit and others of weak soul and body that the camping-out party finally dwindled considerably below its first planned proportions, and those who turned back to the comforts of Tunimba were more than they who faced Baròlin-wards.
It was Sam Shehan who told the tale of the spinnifex and the piora. The blacks had flatly refused for fear of "Debil-debil" to go into the bunya scrub. This to them was the forbidden region, forbidden of Puyme, the Misty One, and Yooltanah, the Great Spirit. Only Jack Nutty and Pompo were of the emancipated from superstition's bondage, and were regarded as pariahs in consequence by their more dusky brethren.
Rose Garfit went back with her mother. So did Lord Waveryng, who complained of a twinge of sciatica. His spouse was intrepidity itself. "Take care of them all, Frank," plaintively adjured Mrs. Jem. Jem accompanied his wife.
"You have been drawing the long bow, Shehan," said Frank to the stockman. "It's my belief," he added to Trant, "that Shehan has a cattle-stealing plant up this way, and is afraid of my finding it out. He has been dead against
