They passed an interesting looking door, and Nesta at once said,—

"Oh, we're missing one. That must be the library, because of the double doors and the carved owl over them. Do let's go in."

"Can't," said Herbert, glad to show some superior knowledge at least of the ways of the house if not of its contents. "Grandfather is always there all morning, and no one ever disturbs him."

"That portrait over there is our great-great-grandfather," said Brenda in the dining-room.

"No," said Nesta, shaking her head; "one more great. Great-great-great-grandfather, Eustace Chase."

Brenda flushed with annoyance.

"Well, I really think I ought to know," she said, "considering I've lived here all my life.—It is only great-great, isn't it, Herbert?"

Herbert looked worried.

"No, it is three greats," he said grudgingly.

"I knew for certain," said Nesta.

Brenda allowed Herbert to take up the role of conductor awhile. Nesta was getting on her nerves. But presently, in the smaller drawing-room, they all came to a standstill in front of the picture of a beautiful little brown-haired girl.

"That was Aunt Dorothy when she was little," said Brenda very low.

Nesta knew this also, but she said nothing for once.

Herbert led the way out of the house in silence.

Out of doors Nesta displayed just the same irritating certainty of things. The sun-dial she noticed from a distance.

"That has 'Sic transit vita' on it," she said hurriedly, lest she should be forestalled. "Oh, and that tank is the little well place mother fell into when she was Becky's age."

But she received a check later.

"The good old swing and the giant's stride," she said with enthusiasm.

"No—new ones," said Herbert with satisfaction; "the old ones were rotten, and these were put up for us."

Nesta put her next venture in the form of a question.

"Is that the summer-house mother and the aunts played dolls in?"

"No," said Brenda, "that fell down. This is mine. Grandfather gave it me one birthday."

Everything had the impress of the Dixon children—everything seemed to be "mine" or "Herbert's." It was a depressing morning for the Australians, though Nesta did flatter herself she must have clearly demonstrated her knowledge of Maze Court and pretty well surprised her cousins. It annoyed her that Eustace had been so dumb, and seemingly unable to say more than "yes" or "no" to things. It showed a lack of spirit about him she would not have expected after his sally about the troughs they fed out of with the coolies, and his assertion only that morning that he felt inclined to become a savage and astonish the Dixons.

"I expect he's afraid of Herbert," she thought; "but I'm not."

Eustace was not either, but he was just a little ashamed of his outburst of the evening before. Looked at by light of day it seemed unnecessary waste of temper. He thought Bob would not have thought much of him for it; it was rather babyish.

Oh, how homesick he felt! What wouldn't he have given to have seen Bob walking down one of those wide paths towards them. Good old Bob! Poor old Bob! What would Brenda and Herbert think if they only knew all that story? It was enough to keep the boy silent to have such thoughts as these starting up in his memory again and again; enough to make him ashamed of any pettiness. But the thought of Bob alone had power to do that; he was so big, so splendid, such a man!

Coming out of the gardens into the park they met nurse and Becky.

"Oh," said nurse, looking flushed and flustered, "isn't Master Peter with you? I can't find him anywhere. I just left him while I went to dress Miss Becky, and never thought to tell him to wait for me."

"Peter isn't used to staying in one room," said Eustace quietly. "I guess he is looking for us."

"But it is very naughty of him," said the English nurse in vexation.

"Peter wouldn't mean to be naughty," said Eustace in the same quiet tone; "but you see we are so used to be all together all day long on the veranda."

"That's all very fine," said nurse, "but it doesn't find him for me. I just hope he won't come to some harm or do some mischief before I get him."

"Could he come to any harm?" asked Nesta anxiously.

"Well, there are ponds he could fall into, and places he could climb and tumble out of. And as to mischief—there are things everywhere he could handle and break," said the woman. "I never saw such an inquisitive little fidget as he is. He is all the time asking questions and wanting to touch everything he sees."

There immediately began a hunt for Peter. Here, there, and everywhere they went in pairs, but nowhere could he be found. They called him, but there was no answer; they asked every one they met, but no one had seen him.

Mrs. Chase was out driving with Mr. and Mrs. Orban; there seemed no one to appeal to.

The search reminded Eustace of the story of the loss of Aunt Dorothy, and he went and looked in the turret and the secret chamber through the cupboard door; but Peter was not there.

Nurse was becoming frantic, for of course she felt responsible for her charge. Eustace and Nesta began to be worried. Herbert was cross because this prevented his rabbit-shooting; he could not very well go away leaving such an anxious household as this. Brenda felt sorry both for him and for the twins, but said nothing.

The search-party met in the hall, just as that other search-party had kept doing so many, many years ago, but there was never any news.

"Can there be a secret chamber somewhere else?" said Nesta.

Brenda shook her head.

"I don't think so," she said.

"I wish father would come home," Eustace thought miserably. "He might think of something."

"We had better ask grandfather what is to be done," said Herbert at last in desperation.

It was a last resource. Nothing but the most serious business was allowed to interrupt Mr. Chase's morning, but this had become sufficiently pressing to warrant the intrusion.

In through the folding-doors trooped the anxious-looking searchers, Herbert first.

"Well, I never!" he exclaimed, for there stood Peter as calm as you please, his hands behind him, staring at his grandfather across the broad writing-table.

"Can you ride bareback?" he was inquiring in his shrill treble. "Bob can; but he said I mustn't try because it is slimy."

"Slimy?" repeated Mr. Chase, with brows bent in perplexity.

"Yes," said Peter, "sliddery, you know. A horse is a very slippery beast for short legs, Bob says."

He went on quite regardless of the intruders, who stood watching in awed silence, because if Mr. Chase did not order Peter out of the room, it was no one's business to do so.

"And who may this Bob be you keep quoting?" asked Mr. Chase—"a bushranger?"

"No, he's our friend," replied Peter. "He is just Bob, you know, who comes to see us. Once Eustace and he were lost in the scrub. And Bob says Eustace is a—"

"Peter!" exclaimed Eustace.

"I wasn't going to say anything bad," said Peter. "I was only going to tell grandfather how you—"

"Grandfather doesn't want to know," said Eustace, looking red and uncomfortable.

Mr. Chase turned his bright blue eyes on Eustace; they were blue eyes, very like Peter's.

"Perhaps grandfather does," he said firmly.—"Go on, Peter."

"I can tell you better," said Eustace hurriedly. "It is only Bob was lost, and I got lost looking for him; and we thought some natives were going to kill us, but the chief wanted a reward, so he fetched father and Mr. Cochrane to take us home."

Mr. Chase listened quietly. It was a tame little story, without much point to it told like that, but he had watched Eustace's sensitive face narrowly, and he asked no further questions.

"I seem to be honoured with much company this morning," he said instead, looking round the group on the threshold. "What are you all doing, if I may ask?"

"Looking for Peter, grandfather," explained Herbert uncomfortably, certain that Mr. Chase was annoyed. "We've been hunting for him for the last hour."

"I've had the pleasure of his society for about that space of time," said Mr. Chase. "I have had to give an account of how many black men and how many Chinkees I employ about the place; whether I wouldn't rather live in Queensland if I had a hundred pounds of my own; and how long I sleep in the winter. I don't know why he wants to know that, I am sure."

"Oh," said Peter quickly, "because Bob says people in England sleep like dormice in the winter, and have to be wakened by big knockers on the door."

"I see," said Mr. Chase gravely, "your friend Bob seems to know more about England than I do—probably because I sleep right through the winter. Now, if you have asked everything you can think of, perhaps you will take your tribe away with you, Peter Perky."

The twins jumped violently at the name, and stared at the speaker in astonishment. No one but Aunt Dorothy had ever called Peter that.

"I should like to know if you roll up when you sleep, or lie flat," Peter said, not feeling at all anxious to go. "Aunt Dorothy always called me a dormouse at night—"

"You can go, Peter," interrupted Mr. Chase hurriedly; "I am busy."

Herbert took the child by the shoulder and marched him out of the room.

"Peter, how could you?" exclaimed Brenda, when they reached the schoolroom.

"How could I what?" demanded Peter, looking puzzled.

"Why, speak about poor Aunt Dorothy before grandfather," said the girl. "Nobody does; he can't bear it."

"Can't he?" said Peter mildly; "but he asked me a lot of questions about her himself. And I told him how she called me Peter Perky, and all about her saving my life in the wreck."

"What!" interrupted the cousins in a breath; "she did what?"

"Didn't you know?" said Eustace.

"We don't know anything except what that awful cable said," Brenda said in a low, shaky voice.

Between them the twins and Peter told the whole story. Herbert sat at the table, his head buried in his hands. Brenda listened with her back to the speakers, looking away out of the window.

There was a long pause.

"Then," said Herbert huskily at last, "if it hadn't been for Peter, Aunt Dorothy would never have been drowned."



CHAPTER XIX.

THE LAST STRAW.

The words fell like a thunderbolt into the midst of the group. Eustace moved involuntarily to Peter's side and put a protecting arm round him, as if he had been struck. The little fellow himself looked utterly bewildered.

"How can you say such a wicked, wicked thing?" exclaimed Nesta in astonishment; "just as if it was poor Peter's fault."

"Well, wasn't it?" demanded Herbert bitterly, his face still hidden. "If Peter hadn't been at the other side of the ship—if Aunt Dorothy had not had to go away and find him—but you all got into the boat and went away and left her!"

"Don't!" exclaimed Eustace sharply. "You don't know what a wreck in the dark is like, or you wouldn't talk like that. There isn't time to know anything. We didn't know Aunt Dorothy was left."

"I should have known," said Herbert, with all the confidence of ignorance, "and I would have stayed and drowned with her."

He broke off short, rose abruptly, and stumbled in a queer, blind way from the room. He could not bear that any one should witness his grief.

Brenda turned a tear-stained face from the window and stared at the trio now standing close together.

"He isn't thinking what he is saying," she said chokily; "but we are so frightfully unhappy about Aunt Dorothy—and this seems to make it worse—I mean that she might so easily have been saved. Of course you didn't really know her, so you can't understand. But ever since our mother died Aunt Dorothy—"

But here Brenda's voice broke utterly, and she, too, hurriedly left the room.

"Well," exclaimed Nesta, "I think it just horrid of them. I shall never, never like them now."

Eustace turned a pair of surprised brown eyes upon her.

"Won't you?" he said wonderingly. "Why, I like them better than I did, ever so much."

"What!" Nesta said, "you like them better for saying a horrid thing like that? To make out it was Peter's fault! Poor little Peter, who was so nearly drowned himself!"

"It wasn't that part I was thinking of," said Eustace, "but just how they loved her. Somehow I never thought of it before. Same way we love mother, I guess; and I don't know what I should have thought if mother had been drowned saving some one else's brother."

Nesta stared at him blankly. There were things about Eustace lately that she did not understand. She knew nothing of Bob's maxim about looking at two sides of a question, so she could see no reason for the strange things he sometimes said, and he was far too reticent to have explained.

"Well, all I can say is, I wish we had never come," said Nesta for about the twentieth time. "Nothing is nice, and it will be more hateful than ever now they feel like that about Peter. We had better tell mother and father, and ask them to take us away."

"What's that I hear?" said an astonished voice at the door.

The children all jumped and turned round, for there stood their grandfather. They were speechless with dismay; they could not have pictured a worse thing happening.

"What did you say, Nesta?" asked Mr. Chase again, in a tone that made the twins' hearts stand still.

He looked angry, surprised, and very commanding. But how were they to repeat what they had been saying? Nesta remembered they had been warned not to speak of Aunt Dorothy before him. Eustace felt it would be mean and ungenerous to get Herbert into trouble behind his back. But Peter had no such scruples. Dropping his head into his arms on the table, he broke out sobbingly,—

"Herbert says it was me drowned Aunt Dorothy."

"What!" exclaimed Mr. Chase incredulously; "he surely never said such a thing? Explain this to me, Eustace, at once."

His tone was so severe that the boy literally shook. He had never seen any one really angry in his life before.

"He didn't say quite that," Eustace said with difficulty; "he only meant it was because of Peter."

"Kindly give me his exact words," Mr. Chase said, still in that awful voice.

Eustace closed his thin lips tight, with an expression that meant wild horses would not drag it from him. His grandfather scanned his face closely, then turned to Nesta.

"As Eustace seems to have lost his tongue, I must ask you to tell me what Herbert said in exactly his own words."

Nesta glanced furtively at her twin, but she was angry with Herbert and saw no reason why he should be protected.

"He said," she replied, "if Peter had not been at the other side of the boat, and Aunt Dorothy had not had to go and find him, she wouldn't have been drowned. He said we all went away and left her—"

"How dared he!" Mr. Chase thundered. "I am ashamed that a grandson of mine should have behaved in such a way. Whatever he thought, he had no right to say such a thing."

"He—he was most fearfully unhappy," said Eustace nervously.

"That is no excuse for his making other people so too," Mr. Chase replied. "Eustace, go and tell Herbert to come here at once."

It was a disagreeable errand, and the boy whitened as he turned to obey. Mr. Chase's prompt, old-fashioned methods were something new to him. Fault-finding at home had always been reserved for quiet talks alone with father or mother; they were never made big public affairs like this.

Eustace found Herbert in his own room pacing up and down the floor with his hands in his pockets. He had got control of himself by then, and he turned on his visitor with a look of impatient surprise.

"What do you want?" he said.

"I'm awfully sorry," Eustace began lamely, "but you've got to come to grandfather. We were talking about what you said, and he came in without our hearing. He made us tell him the rest, and I'm afraid he—he is going to lecture you."

"You—you told tales?" said Herbert scathingly. Without waiting for a reply he marched past his cousin to the schoolroom. Eustace could not bear to follow and see him humiliated. It would be just a little better for him with one person less present, he thought.

"Grandfather was fearfully severe," said Nesta later, when she had found Eustace prowling about like a bear with a sore head alone in the grounds. "So you see it was a beastly thing to say. He said Herbert was no gentleman if he didn't apologize."

"And did he?" asked Eustace shortly.

"He said he was sorry if he hadn't behaved like a gentleman, and it shouldn't occur again. Most awfully stiffly he spoke, just like a grown-up, and then grandfather said he might go."

"And that before you and Peter!" exclaimed Eustace in tones of disgust. "I'm jolly glad I wasn't there; it would have made me feel a low-down black-fellow if Herbert had apologized to me. I don't think Peter behaved like a white man, and I mean to tell him so, too, when I get him to myself."

"Grandfather seems to have taken a fancy to Peter," said Nesta. "He had come up to fetch him when he overheard me. He said Peter had already broken his morning, and he had better have the rest of it and take him a walk. Brenda says she never knew him do such a queer thing before; he is not generally supposed to be fond of children, and that is why we have no meals downstairs."

Every one was surprised at Mr. Chase's sudden partiality for Peter, but the reason was a very simple one. From Peter he could hear more about Miss Chase than from any one else. No tears choked little Peter's voice when he described Aunt Dorothy's first day, or told the story of her quaint mistakes. He quite forgot the sad part of her visit, and lost himself in his stories. The old man led him on from point to point, and learned all that he could of his beloved daughter's stay in Queensland without Peter's guessing what he was really doing.

The little fellow was radiantly happy. They walked about the grounds together, and presently Mr. Chase said Peter must learn to ride—he would teach him himself. Accordingly, out went Peter on a little pony with Mr. Chase at its head, and the riding lessons began.

"It doesn't look as if grandfather thought it was Peter's fault," said Nesta to Eustace; "he seems fonder of him than any one."

If Peter was content, not so the twins. The scene with Herbert had produced a very uncomfortable state of affairs. He no longer played the part of host, but kept out of his cousins' way as much as possible, going out on long expeditions by himself, and never joining the schoolroom party when he could help it.

Nesta thought him detestable, but Eustace had a feeling that Herbert had been very hardly treated in his own home. He could not forget how genuine had been the big fellow's unhappiness over the awful loss of his beloved aunt, and Eustace could have forgiven much more than the outburst against Peter in the face of such real distress. But he had no chance of showing his sympathy; Herbert would have resented any exhibition of sentiment most haughtily. Eustace only felt exceedingly awkward whenever he was with him, and wished with all his heart he could awake to find all these unfortunate English experiences nothing but a bad dream.

Between her loyalty to her brother and the sense of courtesy that bade her look after her cousins, Brenda had a very difficult course to steer; being proud and reserved by nature, she only succeeded in being exceedingly stiff in her attempts at civility to the twins.

"It gets horrider and horrider," Nesta said after two or three days of it.

But the secret treaty not to trouble their mother and disturb her enjoyment held good through everything.

"It will come to an end in a year," Eustace said bravely; "and we couldn't bear it after we got back if we had to remember we had spoiled mother's trip. She has been longing for it such a long time."

Because they saw so comparatively little of their mother, it was always possible to keep their grievances from her; and she was so certain her children must be sharing the pleasures with herself, it never occurred to her to suspect that anything was wrong.

"It wouldn't be us spoiling her trip," Nesta objected; "it would be Brenda's and Herbert's faults, because they are so disagreeable."

"It would be because of us," Eustace held out, "and I'll never forgive you if you go whining about it to mother or any one. We can bear it for a year, or we aren't worth anything."

But even Eustace's courage received a check one evening when he and Nesta were called into their mother's room for a talk before she dressed for dinner. Her face was aglow with some pleasant thoughts, yet she was very serious—a strange mixture that immediately struck the twins as portending something very big and out of the way.

"Chicks," she said, drawing them down on each side of her on the sofa, "I have got something very special to say to you to-day—something I scarcely know whether to be most glad or sorry about, for it cuts two ways. It fulfils the ambition of my life for you, and at the same time it costs me my twins."

There was a breathless, expectant silence.

"I think for you the happiness will outweigh the pain," she went on gently, "because it means new interests, new life, everything you must most desire. And, dears, we have to thank grandfather for it; he insists on sending you both to school."

"To school!" shouted the twins simultaneously.

"Yes," Mrs. Orban said, "actually to school. He wishes you to have exactly the same advantages as Brenda and Herbert. Won't it be splendid for you?"

There was dead silence. Mrs. Orban glanced from one grave face to the other. Nesta's was crumpled and bewildered; Eustace's very white, and his expression sadly strained.

"Why, darlings," Mrs. Orban said, "you have always wanted to go to school. Hasn't it nearly made me cry again and again to hear you craving for a thing we could not give you? And now your wishes have been granted as it were by magic, I do believe you are not glad after all."

There was such a ring of disappointment in their mother's voice that even Nesta was roused.

"We've wanted it awfully," stammered Eustace awkwardly, "but we—we didn't think of it coming quite so soon."

"Oh, is that it, you dears?" Mrs. Orban said in a tone between laughter and tears. "I was afraid something much worse was the matter—that you had changed your minds, for instance, or that you didn't like England after all; but of course that couldn't be."

She spoke with such perfect certainty that the twins were dumb; they could think of nothing to say.

"There really is rather a blessing in disguise in your going to school at once, though I can't bear parting with you," Mrs. Orban went on after a little silence. "I shall be quite close to you while you are still feeling strange in your new life; I shall hear all about everything from you by word of mouth in the holidays; and I shall go away next year feeling content that you are settled down, and likely to be nothing but a tiny bit mammy-sick at my departure."

Eustace rubbed his head against her shoulder.

"More than a tiny bit, mummie," he said.

"We needn't think about that yet, though," said Mrs. Orban cheerily; "it is a long way off, with plenty of lovely times between. I only wish father had not to go so soon."

"How soon?" queried Nesta sharply.

"He says he must be off the end of this month," was the answer; "that is why the school-going has had to be settled so hurriedly. But he has a lovely dream for the future: before you have left school he hopes to be able to come to England for good and settle down here."

"How long would it be before that, mother?" Eustace asked.

"Oh, four or five years, perhaps," said Mrs. Orban.

"But shan't we ever go back to Australia again?" Nesta said with a gulp.

"You won't want to, my dear, once you get used to England," said her mother gently. "Of course it would not be possible for you to come home all that distance for holidays, but you will soon learn not to mind if you have our home-coming to look forward to. Now I will tell you a little about the schools you are going to."

It was easy to listen with apparent interest to this, to put in a question here and there and glean all the information possible. But when the pair left the room Nesta suddenly gripped her brother's arm.

"Eustace," she said huskily, "I—I can't bear it."

"You just must," said the boy sturdily. "I guess there is nothing else to do."

The words were so hopeless that Nesta's tears began to fall thick and fast, and he drew her almost roughly down the passage out of earshot. They reached the picture gallery, and sat down in a deep window-seat overlooking the front drive and the beautiful park beyond. Here Nesta buried her face in her hands and fairly sobbed. Eustace bore it for some seconds, then,—

"Look here, old girl," he said, "don't be silly. You'll have a red nose for dessert."

"I don't care," Nesta blurted out.

"But you must care," Eustace said a little impatiently, "because then mother will see you have been crying and find out we're miserable."

"I don't care," sobbed Nesta again. "I can't hide it any more, and I don't want to. I shall ask father to let me go home with him. Nothing will make me stay here with these—these horrid people."

"Nesta!" Eustace exclaimed.

"Well, I can't help it; they are horrid, even if they are our people. I never thought of them being anything like this. And I can't—I won't stay with them."

"Rot," said Eustace angrily. "You know we can't help staying if every one says we are to."

"Then," said Nesta, drawing herself up with a sudden attempt at dignity, "I shall run away."

"Silly!" Eustace exclaimed irritably.

"You'll see it isn't silly when I do it," said Nesta gloomily. "I shall tell father and mother everything about how horrid it is for us, and then if they won't take us home—"

She stopped dramatically, leaving Eustace to fill in the threat for himself.

"You really will tell mother, and spoil everything for her?" he asked in a low, angry tone.

Nesta nodded defiantly.

"Then you are a little beast," said Eustace furiously—"a cruel little beast."

Nesta rose with her nose very high in the air.

"Thank you," she said; "you are most awfully polite. I shall take care not to tell you anything ever again."

Eustace knelt up on the seat, and leant out of the open window into the soft evening air. He was too angry to speak coherently, too bewildered to know what to say. With a toss of her head Nesta turned and left him.

He heard her determined footsteps die away down the gallery, and knew he was meant to understand he had her sincerest disapproval. A few months earlier, he would presently have thrown off his sense of irritation and laughed at Nesta's little airs of importance. To-night he had no heart for the funny side of it. He was vexed to have lost his influence over Nesta, and worried at the thought of what an upset her headstrong course would make. Let alone his mother's disappointment, there would be the grandparents' indignation to reckon with, and Herbert's and Brenda's scornful surprise. They would indeed think them wild Bush children, and be justified in their present attitude of cool unfriendliness.

Yet to be left in these uncongenial surroundings for a space of time that seemed like an eternity to a lad of fourteen; to be forced to remain with these unsympathetic companions for the next four or five years, with no one to turn to and without a home, meant desolation as complete for Eustace as for Nesta.

Away in the park some rooks cawed fussily over the choice of their night quarters. Nearer, a blackbird piped an evening song. They sounded restless and plaintive to the lonely boy, and he hid his face in his hands, covering eyes and ears that he might see nothing, hear nothing. Then into his mind there surged a recollection of the dear old free days at home, never to come again. Right in the midst of every memory stood Bob—his friend Bob whom he would never see again. That was the thought that broke his spirit, and had he been a girl he would have cried; but Eustace shed no tears—this sorrow was beyond them, for a boy.

Something hard suddenly struck him with a sharp tap on the shoulder, and, as he started back in surprise, fell with a clatter back on the gravel below.

Then Eustace gasped, rubbed his eyes, and stared, feeling as if he must suddenly have taken leave of his senses; for there in the drive, his hand poised ready to throw another stone if the first had missed its mark, stood Bob Cochrane.



CHAPTER XX.

BREAKING THE NEWS.

Before the boy had recovered sufficiently to make a sound, Bob said in a low, distinct voice,—

"Don't make a row, old man. It's all right; I'm not a ghost. I want you to get hold of your father for me without a soul knowing that you have seen me. Tell him I am waiting by the first drive gate, and want to speak to him at once. Mind no one else hears what you say. Seeing you is better luck than I expected."

He turned and was walking rapidly away across the centre grass plot before Eustace quite realized this was no dream, but a solid truth, and that something was required of him.

"Bob, Bob, how have you come here?" he called in a trembling voice.

But the figure only half turned with a warning gesture, and passed resolutely on.

For a moment the boy was rooted to the spot. Was this thing real? Could Bob possibly be there? The idea was incredible; yet his eyes, his ears, both bore witness to the fact. But how had it happened? what did it mean?

With thoughts in a turmoil and heart beating to suffocation, he made his way to his father's dressing-room.

"I say, father," he said breathlessly, putting his head round the door at the answer to his knock, "are you nearly dressed?"

"All but my coat," said Mr. Orban, without turning from the glass where he was carefully arranging his evening tie. "Come in if you want to."

There was an open door into the bedroom, where Eustace knew his mother was certain still to be.

"I—I would rather speak to you out here," said the boy, "if you could be quick."

Mr. Orban turned a surprised face.

"Oh, if it is a secret I am sure mother will excuse our shutting the door," he said, and suited the action to the word. "Now come, out with it. Have you been getting into some scrape, old man?"

The boy looked so extraordinarily white that Mr. Orban began to be afraid something serious had happened.

"You are quite certain mother can't hear?" Eustace said in a low tone.

"Perfectly," said Mr. Orban, looking more deeply perplexed, for hitherto Mrs. Orban had shared all secrets; in fact, the children had gone more readily to her with their troubles than to him, because he had so little time for such things. "There hasn't been any accident to one of the others?" he added sharply, struck by a new idea.

"Oh no, no," Eustace said; "nothing like that. But, father," he went on, drawing very close, "I'm not to tell another soul—only you. Bob Cochrane is here. He is waiting for you down by the first drive gate, and wants to speak to you at once."

"Bob Cochrane!" repeated Mr. Orban, blankly staring at the boy. "What are you talking about, child? You've been dreaming, or you've got a touch of fever."

He passed his hand over Eustace's brow, and found it cool enough.

"But it's the truth, father," Eustace said. "I thought I was dreaming myself, and it feels awfully strange still. I was kneeling at the window with my head in my hands, thinking—thinking about home"—his voice faltered a good deal over the words—"when some one hit me on the shoulder with a stone, and I looked down and saw Bob."

"Impossible!" said Mr. Orban. "You've had a delusion because you were thinking about home. You were thinking so hard about Bob you fancied you saw him. Things like that do happen sometimes, you know. Bob is thousands of miles away, looking after the plantation; he couldn't by any earthly possibility be here."

Mr. Orban spoke so certainly that Eustace's faith in his own reason almost wavered; but if vision it were, it had impressed him strongly.

"I don't think I could have seen it so clearly if it had only been my own thought," he argued aloud. "Besides, he spoke; he said quite clearly, 'Don't make a row, old man; I'm not a ghost. I want you to get hold of your father for me without a soul knowing that you have seen me. Tell him I am waiting by the first drive gate, and want to speak to him at once. Mind no one else hears what you say. Seeing you is better luck than I expected.'"

The words were branded on his memory by the shock he had received, and now it was Mr. Orban's turn to become white.

"If it is so really," he said in an odd, unsteady voice, "he brings bad news. Something so bad has happened that he could not break it to me in a letter."

It flashed into Eustace's mind that Bob had looked awfully grave and queer—if Bob it really were, and no delusion! Suppose his father should go to the gate and find no one awaiting him—what then?

"You—you will go and see if he is there?" faltered the boy nervously.

"I am going at once," said Mr. Orban. "When you are dressed yourself, go down into the drawing-room as usual, as if nothing had happened." He opened the door into Mrs. Orban's room and said lightly, "There's a man just called to see me, dear. If I happen to be detained, make my apologies to the old people, and ask them not to wait dinner for me."

Mrs. Orban made a cheery, unsuspecting response, and he and Eustace left the room.

The twins and the Dixon pair always assembled in the drawing-room with every one before dinner was served, and there they awaited the summons to dessert, as a rule with books, in dreary silence.

When Eustace came down he found every one waiting for dinner. Mr. Orban was not yet in, and Mr. Chase would not hear of beginning the meal without him.

"His friend can't in conscience keep him late at such an hour," he said. "Of course we will wait."

No one was very talkative. It seemed to Eustace as if something of the coming shadow were creeping over the community before the bad news could even be dreamed of by any one except himself. There was just the sort of deadly calm and stillness over everything that comes before a thunderstorm.

Nesta had curled herself up in a deep window-seat, well out of sight. Eustace guessed she had made such a fright of herself with crying she was afraid to show her face. He sat near the door into the great conservatory with a book, pretending to read. Really he could do nothing but wonder what terrible thing could be going to happen next.

Presently, just when Mr. Chase was getting a little restless, and Mrs. Orban began anxiously watching the door, Mr. Orban came hurriedly into the room.

"Forgive my being so late," he said in a voice that vibrated strangely; "but I am afraid I must detain you still for a few minutes. The fact is, a Queensland friend of mine has just turned up with—with some rather curious details about the wreck of the Cora. He thought it would pain us less to hear them by word of mouth than by letter, so he came himself."

"Very good of him, I'm sure," said Mr. Chase, looking surprised. "Won't he stay and dine with us, and then afterwards—"

"Oh, of course he must stay the night!" cried Mrs. Chase hospitably; "and this evening we can talk things over quietly when the children have gone to bed."

"I think," said Mr. Orban, with a gravity that impressed every one deeply, "my friend would rather have his interview at once. He is anxious to get it over as soon as possible. I have asked him into the boudoir, Mrs. Chase. I thought we would talk there more quietly than here."

"Certainly," said Mrs. Chase, rising and leading the way to the boudoir, which opened off the drawing-room.

Every one looked utterly bewildered, and Mr. Chase just a little annoyed. It was most unprecedented that dinner should be so delayed. Eustace noticed his father whisper something to his mother; she started, flushed painfully, and he guessed Mr. Orban had told her who the visitor was.

The boudoir door closed after the elders, and there was silence in the drawing-room. Herbert became restless, and wandered about the room opening books or fingering the ornaments in an aimless way; Nesta stared gloomily out of the window, and Brenda tried to read.

Eustace could stand the inaction and the unsympathetic company no longer, so, getting up, he strolled into the sweet-smelling conservatory to be alone.

There were scents there that always wafted him in memory back home—he loved the warmth and the plants. There was a large oval stage covered with flowers in the centre, and round this he strolled towards the outer door.

So it was about the wreck Bob had come to speak. What more painful news could he have to bring than they already knew? The boy's common sense told him that the details must have to do with the death of Aunt Dorothy; nothing of less importance could have brought Bob over. Perhaps he had met an eye-witness of the tragedy! Perhaps there were last messages from the drowned girl!

Eustace turned a corner and came to an abrupt standstill. It seemed to him in that instant as if his very heart stopped beating and his hair stood straight on end.

It was absurd, of course. Bob had turned out to be no mere creation of his own brain, but this could be nothing else. Here was proof positive of Mr. Orban's words that one has but to think hard enough about a person to imagine one sees him.

With her back to the outer door—a white figure with a face as colourless as her dress—stood Dorothy Chase; nothing about her was lifelike except the familiar deep-brown eyes that gazed steadfastly on the startled boy.

It was an extraordinarily vivid hallucination, and not a little terrifying. Was it no fancy? Could it possibly be Aunt Dorothy's spirit come to visit her old home again? The thought leapt into the boy's mind.

Eustace was no coward, but the notion fairly paralyzed him; he could not have moved to save his life. One supreme effort he made.

"Aunt Dorothy," he whispered hoarsely, and could say no more, for his lips were parched, his throat was dry.

The vision raised a warning hand.

"Hush!" she said; "don't be frightened. I see Bob has not told you yet; but it is all right, darling. I am a real live human being, and no spirit. Just Aunt Dorothy come back to you safe and sound."

The words seemed to come from far away, and Eustace felt so queer he swayed to try and keep his balance. He was so giddy he must have fallen had the vision not swept forward and caught him. The feeling of those strong arms about him, the warm touch of Aunt Dorothy's face bent down to his, brought him with a jerk to himself again, and he did not faint. But even then he could not believe his senses.

"I don't understand," he gasped, shaking from head to foot in her arms; and he pressed his face tight against her shoulder to try and recover himself.

"Poor old chap!" said Aunt Dorothy, "how I have upset you! I never meant any of you to see me till you knew. Bob is breaking the news to father and mother gently. We were afraid the shock of joy would be too much for them, so we did not even cable, but came at once. A letter would have got here very little sooner than ourselves."

She talked on in a soft, soothing voice to give the boy time to pull himself together, and all the time she held him close.

"You—you weren't drowned," Eustace managed to blurt out.

"Very nearly, but not quite," was the reply; "my escape was like a miracle. Ah, here comes Bob at last."

"Have I seemed an awful time?" said Bob gently. "It was a difficult thing to do. Come—they are waiting for you."

The pair passed swiftly up the conservatory into the drawing-room.

Herbert was standing by the mantelpiece examining a piece of valuable Sevres china. As the stranger, accompanied by that white figure, crossed the room to the boudoir, the ornament fell with a crash, to be splintered into twenty pieces on the fender.

"Oh, what was that?" cried Brenda, starting to her feet and gazing after the apparition.

"It's Aunt Dorothy," said Eustace from the conservatory. "She was never drowned at all."

"What!" said Herbert sharply. "You are dreaming."

"Then we are all dreaming," said Eustace gravely. "You saw her for yourself."

It would be impossible to describe the scene that followed. When the boudoir door opened and the grown-ups all trooped out, headed by Aunt Dorothy, the commotion was beyond words. From the midst of it Mr. Chase slipped away, to return with Peter in his arms. Peter was in pyjamas and dressing-gown, rosy, and fresh roused from sleep.

"We can't let him be out of it all," said Mr. Chase. "I have told him of our joyful surprise, and he takes it quite calmly."

"Peter would," said Miss Chase, taking the wee fellow in her arms.

"I'm very glad I didn't drown you," Peter said serenely. "Herbert—"

But he finished the sentence in an incoherent yell, kicking out right and left.

"What is the matter?" asked Dorothy in surprise.

"Eustace pinched my bare leg," Peter said irately, wriggling to the ground in order to avenge himself.

Eustace caught his wrists, and bending low, whispered,—

"You are not to tell tales. I told you that the other day. You don't want to be a low-down black-fellow, do you?"

Peter's face was crumpled with anger, and there is no saying what he would have done if Bob had not exclaimed,—

"Hulloa, Peter! haven't you a word for me?"

The shock was complete. Mr. Chase had not mentioned Bob's arrival, and Peter was wholly unprepared for seeing him.

"Bob!" he shouted, "good old Bob!" and sprang like a young cat at the big fellow, who caught him skilfully.

"When you have quite done throttling me I shall be glad," said Bob, after enduring the embrace of the merciless little arms a moment.

"But how did you get here?" demanded Peter of the long memory. "Were you bewitched over to England?"

"Come, come," said Mr. Chase; "dinner first and stories afterwards. We shall have to eat cinders as it is, I expect, and cook will give notice to-morrow."

"Every one must come into the dining-room, father," laughed Aunt Dorothy; "I can't part with one of you yet. We will talk while we eat."

In a moment everything seemed changed. All the severity had faded from the old people's faces; they could not have looked more delightfully "grannyish" if they had tried. The dreadful barriers of formality were broken down; no noisier, freer family party had ever gathered in the Queensland home than the one that peopled the stately old dining-room that night.

"This," whispered Brenda to Nesta, "is how we always were before Aunt Dorothy went away. Now you can see why we missed her."

The change was something like a fairy tale to the Bush children; every one seemed suddenly "magicked" into different beings. This, then, was home as mother had known it.

The story of Aunt Dorothy's rescue held the table spellbound; the very butler and footman forgot their duties as they listened.

It appeared that, having jumped into the water with Peter, Dorothy struck out as fast as possible to swim away from the ship, keeping a grip of the little fellow as best she could. But in the terrible commotion that occurred on the going down of the Cora she lost her grasp, and Peter was swept away from her into the inky blackness of the night.

She swam, floated, called, it seemed to her for ages, but all in vain, and at last, in a state of utter exhaustion, she gave herself up merely to the thought of keeping afloat. She must have been many hours in the water, but, losing consciousness after a while, her next experience was to find herself on board a vessel of some sort—a schooner it turned out to be on her way out to the reefs for beche-de-mer fishing.

"Why, we saw her!" exclaimed Eustace. "Mother, that must have been the boat we saw far away out to sea. The captain of the station told us it was theirs."

"They must have picked me up soon after dawn, before the turn of the tide," said Aunt Dorothy. "I think when I came to my senses and saw the kind of people I was among, I was more frightened than I had been even by the wreck. Most of them were black-fellows—the rest I have since discovered were Portuguese; but not a soul in all that uncouth crowd could speak English or understand a word I said."

"It was pretty terrifying," Bob agreed.

"They therefore did not know where I came from, where I wanted to go, or anything about me. I kept imploring them to take me back to land; but this, though they must have understood my signs, they refused to do."

"What brutes!" exclaimed Herbert hotly.

"They are a low-grade lot," said Bob in his quaint Colonial way, "but you know they can only get the beche-de-mer at certain tides. It would have meant a dead loss to them to have put back, and probably they were working under contract, bound to supply a certain amount at a given time to their Chinkee employers."

"But it was horrid of them," said Nesta, who had recovered herself entirely in the excitement, and was inclined to agree even with Herbert for once.

"It was a real adventure, wasn't it?" Eustace said, appealing to Bob.

"Rather more of one than I bargained for," said Aunt Dorothy. "But in their own rough way the men tried to be kind to me. The food we had was disgusting, the boat dreadfully fishy, oily, and dirty; there was not a possibility of being comfortable day or night. But I have nothing to grumble at. They took me back safe and sound to the beche-de-mer station at last, and there I heard all about you, even to the saving of Peter. All the discomforts and horrors put together were nothing to my suspense about your fates till then."

The rest of the story was simple enough. Finding the Orbans had left Cooktown, Miss Chase instantly communicated with Bob, and together they arranged the plan for the home-coming. Their chief aim was to convey the good news as gently as possible, and they certainly achieved their end.

"I don't know how I could have borne the waiting had you cabled," Mrs. Chase said. "I should have suffered agonies imagining fresh accidents that might happen to you all the time."

"Dorothy has become quite an experienced traveller one way and another," said Mr. Chase. "You little thought, my dear, when you set out so gaily from here, what a stormy life you were embarking upon."

"I should think you would be terrified ever to go there again," said Brenda.

"On the contrary," said Bob Cochrane, "I hope your aunt will feel encouraged to return before long. What was the compact, Peter? She was to come back and be burnt as a witch, wasn't she?"

"Not yet awhile," said Mr. Chase gravely. "You can't expect us to part with her for some little time to come."

"Of course not, sir," said Bob genially.

And then he and Dorothy just glanced at each other and laughed with a strange kind of joyousness that mystified the Dixons; but Eustace looked hard at Nesta and nodded meaningly.

Bob's face was no longer haggard and drawn; it wore its old, habitual expression of steadfast happiness.

The party did not break up till "disgracefully late," as Mr. Chase put it. Peter was carried by his mother asleep to bed. The twins and the Dixons felt so wide awake they fancied they would not close an eye all night.

Mr. Chase laughed when he heard the story of the Sevres ornament.

"I'm not surprised you were startled," he said kindly; "but please try to have something a little less valuable in your hands next ghost you meet."

"Nesta," said Eustace, following his twin to her door, "what are you going to do now? Shall you tell mother?"

"Tell mother what?" asked Nesta, with well-feigned astonishment.

"Why, that you are miserable, and won't stay, and all that stuff," was the reply.

"Of course not, silly," Nesta retorted. "Any one can see everything is going to be quite different now Aunt Dorothy has come."

"Of course, silly," said Eustace, in a mocking tone, and they both laughed.

"Good-night, you two," said a voice along the passage, and Herbert turned off into his own room.

"I'm coming to brush my hair in your room to-night," said Brenda, bearing down upon them, brush and comb in hand.

Eustace passed on.

"It is all different already," he said softly. "I think Bob has been right all along—Aunt Dorothy has bewitched us, every one."

THE END.