Now have your run." Nic felt better, for the previous day's trouble had sat upon him like a nightmare.

Hurrying to his room he took his gun, and leaving it at the door was guided by the voices to the big store-room, where Mrs Braydon and the girls were busy unpacking and arranging some of the stores brought by the waggon.
Here he was soon dismissed by his sisters, and after promising to be back in good time, he went off across the home part of the station, catching sight of Samson, Brookes, and a couple of the blacks busy over some task in an open shed, which task looked like the stacking up of bundles of wool rolled neatly together.
"I can't go and tell Brookes I'm sorry before them," thought Nic; "and I'm afraid I don't feel sorry.

I suppose, though, I was a bit in the wrong.

Father knows best; but he wouldn't have let Brookes speak like that.

Brookes wouldn't have dared to do it." The boy had got about a mile away from the station and into a part of the doctor's land which looked as if it had been carefully planted with trees, but his common sense told him that it must be in precisely the same condition as when he took up that part of the country; and after stopping to look round and admire the beauty of the place in every direction, he began to wish that he had brought the two dogs for a run.
"Father says that they are better at home, though, for a bit," he muttered, as he trudged on again, looking for birds or other game, but seeing nothing whatever, not so much as a snake.
His direction this time was parallel with the tremendous gorge whose edge he had stood upon to gaze down; and as in comparison the present part of the huge estate was, though beautiful, somewhat monotonous in its constant succession of large ornamental trees and grassy glades, he was beginning to wish that he had gone in the other direction, to explore the gully down into which Samson had guided him on the way to meet the waggon.
"I want to see that tree bridge, too, that we crossed.