"I'll try," Norah said, obediently.
"Brownie's got dinner for Wally and me in the breakfast-room," Jim said. "Wouldn't you come down, old girl? It's only old Wal., you know, and—and he's so awfully sorry for you, Nor. He's been such a brick. I think it would cheer him up a bit if you came down."
"All right," Norah said, hesitating a moment. "But I'm bad company, Jim."
"We're none of us lively," said the boy. "But we've got to help each other." And Norah looked at him gently, and came.
Dinner was quiet, for the shadow hung upon them all. Wally tried to talk cheerfully, checked by a lump that would rise in his throat whenever he looked at Norah, who was "playing the game" manfully, trying hard to eat and to be, as she would have said, "ordinary." They talked of the plans for the next day, when a systematic search was to be made through the scrub near where the tracks had been found.
"Each of us is to take a revolver," Jim said; "there are five altogether, and the men who haven't got them will have to use their stockwhips as signals if they find anything. Three shots to be fired in the air if help is wanted. And Brownie has flasks ready for every one, and little packets of food with some chocolate; if he's come to grief it'll be nearly forty-eight hours since he had anything to eat. Two of the men are to take the express wagon out as far as it can go, with everything to make him comfortable, if—if he's hurt. Then they can ride the horses on to help us search." Jim forced a sorry smile. "Won't he grin at us if he turns up all right? We'll never hear the end of it!" Then he got up abruptly and walked to the window, looking out across the moonlit flats; and they were all silent.
"I keep thinking all the time I hear him coming," Jim said, turning back into the room. "If you keep still, you can almost swear you can hear old Monarch's hoofs coming up the track—and half a dozen times I've been certain I caught the crack of his stockwhip. Of course, it's—it's all imagination. My word! it's hard to loaf about here and go to bed comfortably when you want to be hunting out there."
"You couldn't do any good, though?" asked Wally.
"No—it would be madness to go straying round those gullies in the moonlight; it's not even full moon, and there the timber's so thick that very little light can get through. There's nothing for it but to wait until daylight."
"It's hard waiting," Norah said.