rom restraint.
The country was before them--theirs as much as any one's--with the
bright sunshine of the day, and gorgeous colours of night and morning.

When they camped they could stay as long as they liked; when they
journeyed they could halt in the hot part of the day in the shade of
some large tree, and go on again in the cool delightful evening; and
there was a something about it all that is indescribable, beyond saying
that it was coloured by the brightly vivid sight of boyhood, when
everything is at its best.

The stores lasted out well in spite of the frightful inroads made by the
hungry party: for Shanter contributed liberally to the larder, and every
day Norman said it was a shame, and the others agreed as they thought of
cages, or perches and chains; but all the same they plucked and roasted
the lovely great cockatoos they shot, and declared them to be delicious.

Shanter knocked down a brush pheasant or two, whose fate was the fire;
and one day he came with something in his left hand just as breakfast
was ended, and with a very serious aspect told them to look on, while he
very cleverly held a tiny bee, smeared its back with a soft gum which
exuded from the tree under whose shade they sat, and then touched the
gum with a bit of fluffy white cottony down.

"Dat fellow going show sugar-bag plenty mine corbon budgery."

"Get out with your corbon budgery," cried Norman. "What's he going to
do?"

They soon knew, for, going out again into the open, Shanter let the bee
fly and darted off after it, keeping the patch of white in view, till it
disappeared among some trees.

"Dat bee fellow gunyah," cried Shanter, as the boys ran up, and they
followed the direction of the black's pointing finger, to see high up in
a huge branch a number of bees flying in and out, and in a very short
time Shanter had seized the little hatchet Rifle carried in his belt,
and began to cut big notches in the bark of the tree, making steps for
his toes, and by their means mounting higher and higher, till he was on
a level with the hole where the bees came in and out.

"Mind they don't sting you, Shanter," cried Tim.

"What six-ting?" cried Shanter.

"Prick and poison you."

"Bee fellow ticklum," he cried laughing, as he began chopping away at
the bark about the hollow which held the nest, and brought out so great
a cloud of insects that he descended rapidly.

"Shanter let 'em know," he cried; and running back to the camp he l