When they reached the wagon, Glenarvan merely mentioned to Lady Helena that there had been a railway accident, without a hint of the crime that had played so great a part in it; neither did he make mention of the presence of a band of convicts in the neighborhood, reserving that piece of information solely for Ayrton’s ear. The little procession now crossed the railway some two hundred yards below the bridge, and then resumed their eastward course.
CHAPTER XII TOLINE OF THE LACHLAN
ABOUT two miles from the railway, the plain terminated in a range of low hills, and it was not long before the wagon entered a succession of narrow gorges and capricious windings, out of which it emerged into a most charming region, where grand trees, not closely planted, but in scattered groups, were growing with absolutely tropical luxuriance. As the party drove on they stumbled upon a little native boy lying fast asleep beneath the shade of a magnificent banksia. He was dressed in European garb, and seemed about eight years of age. There was no mistaking the characteristic features of his race; the crisped hair, the nearly black skin, the flattened nose, the thick lips, the unusual length of the arms, immediately classed him among the aborigines of the interior. But a degree of intelligence appeared in his face that showed some educational influences must have been at work on his savage, untamed nature.
Lady Helena, whose interest was greatly excited by this spectacle, got out of the wagon, followed by Mary, and presently the whole company surrounded the peaceful little sleeper. “Poor child!” said Mary Grant. “Is he lost, I wonder, in this desert?”
“I suppose,” said Lady Helena, “he has come a long way to visit this part. No doubt some he loves are here.”
“But he can’t be left here,” added Robert. “We must—”
His compassionate sentence remained unfinished, for, just at that moment the child turned over in his sleep, and, to the extreme surprise of everybody, there was a large label on his shoulders, on which the following was written:
TOLINE.
To be conducted to Echuca.
Care of Jeffries Smith, Railway Porter.
Prepaid.
“That’s the English all over!” exclaimed Paganel. “They send off a child just as they would luggage, and book him like a parcel. I heard it was done, certainly; but I could not believe it before.”