and a girl with sorrowful, loving eyes leaning out of a second-class
window towards her; there was a brown-faced squatter, in a tweed cap
and slippers, to whom the three-hundred-mile journey was little more
of an event than dining; and there was the young man going selecting,
and thinking England was little farther, seeing his wife and child
were waving a year's good-bye from the platform. There were sportsmen
going two hundred miles after quail and wallaby; and cars full of
ladies returning to the wilds after their yearly or half-yearly tilt
with society and fashion in Sydney; and there were the eight we are
interested in, clustering around the door and two windows, smiling
and waving cheerful good-byes to the Captain.

He did not look at all cast down as the train steamed fussily away---
indeed, he walked down the platform with almost a jaunty air as if
the prospect of two months bachelordom was not without its redeeming
points.

It was half-past six in the afternoon when they started, and they
would reach Curlewis, which was the nearest railway station to
Yarrahappini, about five the next morning. The expense of sleeping-
berths had been out of the question with so many of them; but in the
rack with the bags were several rolls of rugs and two or three air-
pillows against the weary hours. The idea of so many hours in the
train had been delightful to all the young ones; none of them but Judy
had been a greater distance than forty or fifty miles before, and it
seemed perfectly fascinating to think of rushing on and on through
the blackness as well as the daylight.

But long before ten o'clock a change came o'er the spirit of their
dreams. Nell and Baby had had a quarrel over the puffing out of the