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 att.i.tude. 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 amus.e.m.e.nt, 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 with a laugh; "you would look like a coolie. But let us talk sense again."

Talking sense meant talking business, which on this occasion was the making out of a list of really rather dull things wanted in the house.

Daily life begins early on a sugar plantation. It was now only half-past six, and the house had been astir since half-past four; the children playing, Mrs. Orban working about the house, and Mr.

Orban away down on the plantation. The comparative cool of the morning was the best time for any sort of activity. Later, as the fierce December sun rose higher, even the children became listless and disinclined to race about.

After breakfast, when Mr. Orban went back to work, Mrs. Orban gave the children lessons--the only teaching they had ever had. At eleven Mr. Orban returned for early dinner.

To our English ideas the routine seems strange; but the Orban children were used to it, and had no realization of how different was life in their parents' old home. It did not seem at all funny even to the twins to have tea at five, and go to bed at half-past six or seven. They were generally very ready for sleep by then, after their long, exhausting day.

"I say, father," Eustace said suddenly, after a long meditation while business was being discussed, "I can stay up to dinner with mother when you are away--can't I? It will be awfully dull for her if I don't."

"And me too," said Nesta, who never allowed it to be forgotten that, being the same age as Eustace, she claimed the same privileges.

"Rot," said Eustace; "you're only a girl."

"And me too," chimed in Peter.

"Oh, you silly baby," said Eustace impatiently, "what good would you do?"

Peter's delicate face became scarlet.

"I could play games with mother quite as well as you," he said with an angry frown.

"Mother doesn't want amusing like that to keep her from being dull," Eustace declared. "She wants somebody who can talk sensibly like father, and be grown up."

Nesta gave a little derisive laugh.

"Like father!" she repeated; "that is funny. I suppose you think you could be just like him. Why don't you ask him to let you smoke one of his pipes at once?"

"Don't be silly, Nesta," Eustace retorted.

"It's you who are silly," Nesta said, "thinking only boys can be grown up or of any use."

"When you have quite done snapping each other's heads off,"

interposed their father in his deep, quiet voice, "perhaps you will allow me to speak. As a matter of fact, the mother thinks of going to bed with the c.o.c.ks and hens herself."

"To bed with the c.o.c.ks and hens!" repeated Peter, with an expression of blank surprise in his blue eyes.

Now the c.o.c.ks and hens many of them roosted under the house, which was built on pillars, and set some distance above the ground. It was not an attractive spot at any time, for here there also lived many strange creatures, snakes amongst them.

"Well, not exactly in the henhouse, Peter," said his father, with a twinkle in his eyes. "I dare say she will sleep as usual in her own bedroom. I was referring more to the hour at which she says she means to go to bed--not very long after you."

"Still you will have dinner--won't you, mummie?" Eustace said.

"Certainly," Mrs. Orban answered with a smile; "and I don't think it would be a bad plan for you and Nesta to stay up for it, if you will promise not to get up quite so early in the morning. We will have dinner directly after Peter and Becky are in bed; but we won't sit up late ourselves, any of us."

Mrs. Orban certainly showed no signs of nervousness to-day; the strained expression had left her eyes; she was laughing and talking quite naturally.

"I suppose," thought Eustace, "she was partly upset by the parcel from England."

"Father," Nesta exclaimed, "I'm certain I hear a horse coming up the hill. Who can it be at this time of day?"

"Don't know, I'm sure," said her father; "it might be one of a dozen people. You had better go and sing out 'friend or foe' over the veranda; but I dare say it isn't a horse at all. More probably it is old Hadji with the mail bag that ought to have come with the parcel yesterday."

But the three elder children had disappeared out on to the veranda and were leaning over, straining their eyes down the road that wound up the hill from the plain.

It was a very rough road, with ruts in it sometimes two or three feet deep. During the rains little better than a bog, it was now burnt hard as flint.

There was nothing to be seen though a mile of road was visible, lost now and then among bends; but the children listened breathlessly, and at last Eustace said,--