stood silently staring at him a moment, but he seemed already to have forgotten her very existence.

"Well, you are a queer boy," she said, in what the boys always called her "huffy" voice.

Still Eustace took no notice.

"Perhaps you will be sorry some day," Nesta said with a little gulp, and turned away to Becky, who was calling her.

Eustace was apparently engrossed in his book, but not a word did he see on the page he stared at so intently. He had done a stupid thing, and he regretted it, for the mischief was past remedy now. Quite unintentionally he had made Nesta as nervous as he was himself, and he knew that nothing he might say would reassure her. He was quite right that there was no use in talking about it; he felt sure that his father would say he ought not to have said so much, and he was vexed with himself for his carelessness. Silence seemed the only course open to him—silence on the subject for the present, and for the future a great, whole-hearted resolve to play the man come what might.

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CHAPTER II.
BOB.

Eustace was right: their father would not have gone to Brisbane had it not been necessary; but this was not because Mr. Orban was troubled by any fears for the safety of his family. He had lived so long in North Queensland that he was used to the solitude, and thought nothing of the dangers surrounding them. It distressed him to have to go away simply because he knew that his wife would be terribly nervous without him. Fifteen years in the colony had not accustomed her to the loneliness of their position.

Besides the two engineers, and the field manager, Mr. Ashton, who all lived at the foot of the hill, the Orbans had no white neighbours nearer than five miles off. The field hands were coloured men of some five or six different races, chiefly Chinese or Malays—the good-for-nothing riff-raff of their own countries come to seek a living elsewhere.

There was no society, no constant dropping in of friends, nothing to relieve the monotony of daily life. But none of this did Mrs. Orban mind; she was always busy and content by day. It was only of the night-time she was afraid, when strange-voiced creatures were never silent an hour, weird cries from the scrub pierced the air, and there arose from the plantation below wild sounds, sometimes of revelry over a feast, the beating of tom-toms, and wailing of voices as the natives conducted their heathen worship, or indulged in noisy quarrels likely to end in bloodshed between antagonistic tribes.

But though for some reasons the coolies were not pleasant neighbours, the house on the hill had nothing to fear from them. Their worst feature was their utter uselessness in any real danger, coming from quite another quarter. Though they might serve him solely for their own benefit, and were for the most part thieves and rogues, the coolies had no desire to harm the white man personally.

But wandering stealthily through the woods, homeless and lawless, is a race that hates the white man—the aborigines of Australia. Civilization has driven them farther and farther north, for the Australian black-fellows cannot be tamed and trained—their nature is too wild and fierce to be kept within bounds except by fear and crushing. They are treacherous and savage, and most repulsive in appearance. Though spoken of as black, they are really chocolate-brown, but so covered with hair as to be very dusky.

Being very cunning in their movements, it is always difficult to know where they are, and there are often such long lapses between the times they are heard of, that most people forget their existence as a matter of any importance. But Mr. Orban knew that his wife was haunted by a very constant horror of them—a dread lest one night the blacks should make a raid upon their plantation, as they had been known to do upon other white men's dwellings.

What neither Mr. nor Mrs. Orban realized was how much Eustace and Nesta knew of certain terrible events happening from time to time in just such isolated homes as their own. It was from the two young white maidservants the children heard tales they listened to with a kind of awful enjoyment by day, but which were remembered at night with a shudder. The creaking of the wooden house in which they lived as the boards contracted after the tropical heat of day, and the weird sounds rising from the plantation below, held a hundred terrors to be ashamed of in the morning.

Eustace and Nesta never spoke of these night panics to any one, least of all to each other—they seemed so silly when broad daylight proved there had been absolutely nothing to be cowardly about.

By some unspoken rule Peter was never allowed to hear these stories. He was always considered so very much younger than Eustace and Nesta that even the servants had the sense not to frighten him. So Peter's spirits were not damped by the thought of their father's departure, and he knew nothing of the queer little tiff that had taken place between Eustace and Nesta.

It is very odd how people can quarrel over a matter upon which they are perfectly agreed; but they frequently do, especially when it has anything to do with fear.

Nesta went to bed that night still in the sulks, with an air of "You'll be sorry some day" about her every attitude. Eustace seemed inseparable from his book, and disinclined to talk. He went heavily to bed, more troubled than ever because, though his mother was unusually merry, making much of all the presents from England, and showing great interest in them, he saw she was very white, and there was still a strange look about her eyes. He suspected her gaiety to be only put on for their amusement, and he felt sorrier and sorrier for her.

But a good night's rest did wonders for both children, and they came in to breakfast in better humours. Nesta forgot to be tragic when she heard her father and mother discussing what material should be brought from Brisbane for the girls' new dresses. New clothes were a rare event for the Orban children, and always caused a good deal of excitement.

Eustace had been up early, and everything looked so calm, peaceful, and ordinary about the place that he was inclined to be more than half ashamed of his outburst the day before. "After all," he argued, "nothing ever has happened to us—why should it now? The black-fellows have never come this way. Why should they, just because father is away? How could they get to know of his going? Besides, the plantation isn't so awfully far off."

He had stood on the veranda and stared down at the sugar mill lying at the foot of the hill, where Robertson and Farley lived; at Mr. Ashton's house, and all the familiar, odd-shaped huts in which the coolies lived. It was all just as he had seen it every day of his life, and nothing had ever happened—why, indeed, should it now?

Mrs. Orban's interest in the new dresses was certainly not feigned.

"Now, Jack," she was saying as Eustace entered the room, "don't—don't go and ask for dusters. It is that pretty pink and blue check zephyr I want—pink for Becky, and blue for Nesta."

"Well, dear, you must confess it is just like duster stuff—now, isn't it?" demanded Mr. Orban with a laugh.

"O daddy, not a bit!" Nesta exclaimed. "What a horrid thought!"

"Some of mother's dusters are very pretty, young woman," said her father. "I wouldn't mind having shirts made of them myself."

"I should object very much," Mrs. Orban said