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 uncover her weeping eyes, and look once
more at the bare, dry earth, and the wilderness of scrub and trees that
seemed to close her in as if she were in a prison. When she did look up,
she was surprised to see that she was no longer alone. She forgot all her
trouble and fear in her astonishment at seeing a big grey Kangaroo