had never opened her white lips to say one word.

Outside the bullocks stood motionless against the sky--Judy said
they looked like stuffed ones having their portrait taken. She
smiled the least little bit, but Meg said, "Don't," and writhed.

Two of the men had gone on superfluous errands for help; the others
stood some distance away, talking in subdued voices.

There was nothing for them to do. The brown man had been talking--
a rare thing for him.

He had soothed the General off to sleep, and laid him in the bunk
with the blue blanket tucked around him. And he had made a billy
of hot strong tea, and asked the children, with tears in his eyes,
to drink some, but none of them would.

Baby had fallen to sleep on the floor, her arms clasped tightly
around Judy's lace-up boot.

Runty was standing, with a stunned look on his white face, behind
the stretcher. His eyes were on his sister's hair, but he did
not dare to let there wander to her face, for fear of what he should
see there. Nellie was moving all the time--now to the fence to strain
her eyes down the road, where the evening shadows lay heavily, now
to fling herself face downward behind the hut and say, "Make her
better, God! God, make her better, make her better! Oh! CAN'T You
make her better?"

Greyer grew the shadows round the little but, the bullocks' outlines