It was an odd picture on which the Australian sun shone, the black boy on a pony led by a white child in tattered gingham, and two travellers scanned the couple curiously as they urged their horses along. Catching up with the children they would have passed, but Jean suddenly cried,
"Father! Fergus!"
"Jeanie! What on earth!" but the rest of her father's sentence was lost as he clasped the child in his arms and Jean knew that her troubles were over.
"There was a terrible hue and cry, lassie, when it was discovered that Dandy and you were lost," said her uncle that night as she lay, tired but happy, her mother beside her, in a corner of the big couch in the morning room at Djerinallum. "Scouts were sent everywhere, but you seemed to have dropped off the earth. Parties have been searching ever since, but no one has been successful in finding even a trail. We traced you to the place in the woods where you got off your pony, but beyond that there were no tracks. Kadok says that the Black who took you did not mean any harm. His gin was nearly crazy over the death of her child, a little girl younger than you, and he wanted to take you to her to see. They had heard of you from the gin to whom you gave a curl. The Blacks think that when a Black dies he returns to the earth as a white, and he wanted his gin to see you, thinking that you might be his own child come back."
"Poor child, you have had a dreadful time," said her Aunt Mildred.
"Oh, no, except that I was worried about Mother, because I knew she'd think I was killed," she said. Her mother held her close. "I would have been if it hadn't been for Kadok."
"Good Kadok," said Mr. Hume. "His foot is being taken care of now and he shall have a good home for the rest of his life on our run—"
"Oh Father, are you going to have a sheep run! I'm so glad!" cried Jean.
"Yes, we got back from the Gold Country just in time to meet you. I made some money, but I am never going back there. Fergus has no end of adventures to tell you, but it is no place to take you and your mother, and I don't want to leave you again."