only friend.

"It looks just like Bob's driving," said Eustace.

Then they waited with eager faces, too excited to speak, till suddenly they all cried at once,—

"It is Bob—it is—it is—it is!"

Mr. and Mrs. Orban came out on to the veranda, Becky toddling behind.

"There is no doubt about it," said Mr. Orban as he watched the jolting, bumping carriage toiling up the terribly steep hill that was almost too much for the horses, fine beasts though they were.

"How strange of him to come in the buggy instead of riding, as he is alone," said Mrs. Orban.

"Yes," chimed in Nesta, "that was just what I was thinking. Bob always—always rides, excepting—"

She paused to think whether she had ever seen Bob driving before, and Eustace finished her sentence for her.

"Excepting when he doesn't," he said.

"Goose," said Nesta tartly.

"Or, more correctly speaking, 'gander,'" said Mr. Orban. "Well, we needn't squeeze our heads to a pulp trying to guess what we shall learn from Bob without the slightest trouble in another twenty minutes at most."

When Bob Cochrane came within earshot he was greeted with such a chorus of yells that not a single word could he hear of what the children were trying to say. He grinned back good-humouredly, waved, and whipping up his horses, came as fast as he could under the veranda. Then he gathered the meaning of the noise.

"What have you come for, Bob?" shouted the three.

"What have I come for?" he repeated, with his particular laugh which had a way of setting every one else off laughing too as a rule. "Well, upon my word, that is a nice polite way to greet a chap. I had better be off again."

He was big, fair-haired, and gray-eyed, not handsome, but far too manly for that to matter. As Manuel the Manila boy ran round the house to take charge of the horses, Bob got down from the buggy and sprang up the veranda steps in contradiction of his own words. He was surrounded at the top by the children, all talking at once. Without an attempt at answering, he picked up Becky, who adored him with the rest, and passed on to Mr. and Mrs. Orban.

"I apologize for the disorder," Mr. Orban said, "but they have been working themselves up into a fever of expectation ever since they first heard the buggy wheels. Seriously though, I hope nothing is wrong at home. Your mother isn't ill, is she? You haven't come to fetch the wife as nurse, or anything?"

Such friendly acts as these were the common courtesies of their simple colonial life. But Bob only laughed now.

"Oh, nothing wrong at all," he replied. "Mater is right enough; it is only Trix who is the trouble now. She doesn't seem to pick up after that last bout of fever, and she is so awfully depressed and lonely, mother thought if you would let me take a couple of the children—Nesta and another—back with me for a week, it might brighten the kiddy up. Could you spare them, Mrs. Orban?"

"With pleasure," began Mrs. Orban readily, when Nesta started a sort of war-dance with accompanying cries of delight.

"When you have quite done!" said Bob, with a solemn stare that quelled the disturbance after a moment. "I shan't have an ear to hear with by the time I get home, at this rate. Well, who is the other one to be? You, Eustace?"

Eustace coloured deeply. There was nothing he would have liked better. To go to the Highlands, as the Cochranes' plantation was called, was the greatest pleasure that could have been offered him—the treat had only come his way about twice in his life. It meant so much—rides with Bob, shooting with Bob, long rambles always with his hero.

"I should like to awfully," he said, and stopped, looking beseechingly at his father.

"Why, what's the matter, old chap?" asked Bob in a kindly voice. "You're as limp as if all the starch had been boiled out of you. Come along if you want to, of course. Peter can come another time, if it's afraid of being selfish that you are."

"But it isn't that," Eustace said with difficulty. "I mean I can't. You see, father is going away, and I couldn't leave mother."

Bob darted a quick look at Mr. Orban.

"Are you really going away?" he asked—"any distance, I mean?"

"Unfortunately, yes," Mr. Orban said gravely. "I have to be away about a fortnight or three weeks. I go the day after to-morrow."

Bob looked serious.

"Oh, I say," he said, "I'm sorry."

To Nesta, standing there in the sunshine, with a great big pleasure ahead of her, the words conveyed nothing beyond a civil sympathy with the annoyance it must be to Mr. Orban to have to go away on business. To Eustace, who must stay behind, there was something underlying those few words that brought back all the fears of the day before.

"It is a nuisance, but it can't be helped," Mr. Orban said; "business won't wait."

"I am sorry," repeated Bob, with that same strange solemnity, "because I can't offer to come and stay here while you are away. Father is going away too, and of course I couldn't leave the mater and Trix. If only it hadn't happened just now—"

"It is very good of you to think of it, Bob," said Mrs. Orban, "but of course we shall be perfectly safe. I think I would rather you took Peter, though," she added in a lower tone. "Eustace is more companionable. I can spare one of the twins, but not both at once."

"Of course," agreed Bob.

He was strangely unlike his usual cheerful self, but he roused himself, as every one seemed to be looking at him, and added, "Could the children be ready to go back with me soon?"

"Stay till the heat is over, and drive home in the cool with them," suggested Mr. Orban. "I'll say good-bye for the present; I'm due at the plantation."

Eustace was left alone with Bob, for the others went with their mother to watch her preparations for their departure.

"Well, old man," questioned Bob from the depths of a cane chair, where he had flung himself for a quiet smoke, "what's up?"

Eustace stood staring at him.

"I say," he said with some difficulty, "it's beastly about father going, isn't it?"

"Rather," said Bob carelessly. "Mrs. Orban will feel awfully dull."

"That isn't the worst of it," said the lad mysteriously.

"Really?" questioned Bob indifferently, as he packed his pipe with great apparent interest.

"You know it isn't, Bob," Eustace broke out desperately.

"Do I?" questioned Bob lazily, but with a shrewd glance at the thin, pale face before him. "Why, what's the trouble?"

"It's the black-fellows," Eustace said in a half whisper.

Bob raised his eyebrows a little, and was again attentive to his pipe.

"Indeed?" he said; "what about them?"

"They are all round us in the scrub; you never know where they are," Eustace said with a gulp.

"They always are, and one never does," said Bob lightly. "I don't see that it matters. Are you in a funk about them?"

The cool question brought crimson to Eustace's cheeks.

"No," he said sturdily, "but they are a fearfully low grade lot, and—and they have done some awful things in lonely places, out of revenge, on white people."

Bob looked up sharply.

"What do you know about it?" he asked in a voice that sounded almost stern.

"The servants—Kate and Mary—have told us stories," Eustace explained.

"Oh, they have, have they?" Bob positively snorted in indignation. "Then they deserve to be sacked."

He was silent a long time, puffing out volumes of smoke, then he said suddenly,—

"Look here, Eustace, don't get stupid and frightened about the black-fellows. Your father has never done them any harm; they have nothing to revenge here, for he hasn't interfered with