Page:More Australian legendary tales.djvu/83

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Walloobahl the Bark Lizard


Every day, while the little camp children were playing and their parents were away hunting, a strange little boy used to come to the camp. He was only a little boy about six or seven years old.

Every afternoon, after having played for some time with the other children, he would run away from them, go round the different dardurrs, and steal food out of them all, taking, anything eatable he could find.

When the children saw him thus helping himself, they called out: "Don't touch our mother's things!"

He did not heed them, but took what he wanted. The children used to try and get what he took back. But when they came near to him he shot up suddenly taller and taller, far out of their reach. Having thus startled them into leaving him alone, he would escape to his own camp, the whereabouts of which no one knew. At last the parents began to notice how much of their food was taken during their absence, and they said angrily to their children, "You eat all our food."

"No," they said, "we do not. It is a little boy who comes while you are away. He comes along that track in the scrub."