The magpie protested against his introduction to the establishment, and used to pluck billfulls of hair from his stomach under pretence of lining a nest, which was never made.

But in spite of this, the good gentle beast lived nigh as long as the magpie--long enough to be caressed by the waxen fingers of little children, who would afterwards gather round their father, and hear how the bear had been carried to the mountains in the bosom of the little boy who lost his way on the granite ranges, and went to heaven, in the year that the bushrangers came down.
Sam carried the little corpse back in his blanket, and that evening helped the father to bury it by the river side.

Under some fern trees they buried him, on a knoll which looked across the river, into the treacherous beautiful forest which had lured him to his destruction.
Alice was very sad for a day or two, and thought and talked much about this sad accident, but soon she recovered her spirits again.

And it fell out, that a bare week after this, the party being all out in one direction or another, that Cecil saw Alice alone in the garden, tending her flowers, and knew that the time was come for him to keep his bargain with Sam and speak to her.

He felt like a man who was being led to execution; but screwed his courage to the highest point, and went down to where she was tying up a rose-tree.
"Miss Brentwood," he said, "I am come to petition for a flower." "You shall have a dozen, if you will," she answered.