"How is she?"

"Did you find Doc. Wild?" asked the mother.

"No, confound him!" exclaimed Joe bitterly. "He promised me faithfully
to come over on Wednesday and stay until Maggie was right again.
Now he has left Dean's and gone -- Lord knows where. I suppose
he is drinking again. How is Maggie?"

"It's all over now -- the child is born. It's a boy; but she is very weak.
Dave got Mrs. Palmer here just in time. I had better tell you at once
that Mrs. Palmer says if we don't get a doctor here to-night
poor Maggie won't live."

"Good God! and what am I to do?" cried Joe desperately.

"Is there any other doctor within reach?"

"No; there is only the one at B----; that's forty miles away,
and he is laid up with the broken leg he got in the buggy accident.
Where's Dave?"

"Gone to Black's shanty. One of Mrs. Palmer's sons thought
he remembered someone saying that Doc. Wild was there last week.
That's fifteen miles away."

"But it is our only hope," said Joe dejectedly. "I wish to God
that I had taken Maggie to some civilised place a month ago."

Doc. Wild was a well-known character among the bushmen of New South Wales,