The Family on Wheels

by J. Macdonald Oxley

"In which direction will you go, Cæsar?"

Cæsar gazed earnestly in every direction, asking of the horizon the question his sister had put to him, but there was no answer forthcoming from the encircling gloom. He had overlooked the fact that the snow had obliterated the roads, and that consequently he would be unable to find his way. In a despondent tone he replied:

"I won't go at all, Nadine. I don't know where Mamezan lies. We'll have to stay here for the night, and make the best of it."

The big canvas was accordingly used to cover poor old Nalla, who lay groaning dolefully, and Steady having been tied close to the van so as to get all the shelter it could afford, the Tambys went to bed supperless.

Not a star shone in the sky, nor friendly light glimmered in the distance. The children were alone—utterly alone, on the great plain of which the snow had made a white lifeless desert.

They threw themselves upon their beds without undressing, and Abel, poor little chap, did not take long to go to sleep, but Cæsar and Nadine could not thus forget for a time their troubles. Again and again did one or other of them get up to go to Nalla, who moaned piteously, and at last, about four o'clock, they became greatly alarmed by the heartrending cries of the animal, who appeared to be in great suffering, and unable to lift his head from where it lay upon the frozen ground.

The two children, filled with the keenest concern, and yet powerless to do anything, remained by the head of their faithful friend, and at break of day were joined by Abel, who had awakened from his sleep.

When Nalla lay down he instinctively turned his head to the quarter in which the sun would rise, as if he would see for the last time, may be, the dawn which had always been a favorite sight with him. And now his eyes, almost closed, watched the first faint gray lights of a chill winter's morning.

Perhaps he then had a vision of the far-away jungle in which he was born, and where he spent his youth. Perhaps this plain, stripped of its winding-sheet of snow, that stretched before his eyes, recalled to his memory those other plains of far greater extent, which he had traversed in his own country. Perhaps he saw, as in a mirage, the dense thickets of luxurious vegetation in which he had taken refuge with his own kind, and the savage grandeur of the mysterious regions wherein his early years had been spent.