er. However did you guess?" and Mary, now almost
as tall as Jim, hugged Mrs Westonley's slender waist; "that's exactly
what I did mean to do. But I also meant to catch fish as well."

"Then you can 'catch' me some guinea-fowl eggs instead, to make egg and
bread-crumb to fry the fish. Mr Aulain, do you know that Tom brought
some guinea-fowl from Port Denison, and now we have hundreds of them?
They are horrid things, though. Instead of laying in the fowl-house in
an ordinary Christian fowl-like way, they go miles away, and of course
the carpet snakes and iguanas, and kookaburras,{*} get most of the eggs
and chicks--except those which Jim and Mary find."

* Laughing jackasses.

Aulain laughed as he swung his light, wiry figure into his saddle, and
then he and Jim cantered off.

A few hours later, as he and the lad were returning to the station, he
lit his pipe and said:

"So your aunt doesn't care about the beach, and the sea, and the old
Dutch ship buried in the sand, eh, Jim?"

"No, Mr Aulain. She says she cannot look at the sea without
shuddering--it always makes her think of her father and mother, and the
wreck of the _Cassowary_. But Uncle Tom and Miss Fraser like the beach,
and always went there in preference to anywhere else when they went for
a ride."

Poor Jim, never for one moment imagining the cause of Aulain's interest
in Miss Fraser's movements, was then led on by him to relate nearly
everything that had occurred at the station during her last visit. "Was
she fond of fishing?" Aulain asked. "Oh, yes, and so was Uncle Tom. They
would go out nearly every day either to the beach for bream, or up one
of the creeks for spotted mullet."

Sometimes he (Jim) and Mary would go with them, and then it would be a
regular all-day sort of fishing and shooting picnic Miss Fraser used
to shoot too, and Uncle Tom was teaching her to shoot from the left
shoulder as well as the right--like he could. Then he went on to say
that next time Kate came to Ocho Rios she, Gerrard and Mary and himself
were all going to Duyphen Point, where there was a small coco-nut grove.

"It will be grand, won't it, Mr Aulain? You see we are going to take
two pack-horses, and our guns and fishing-lines, and will camp there for
three or four days and come back with a load of coco-nuts."

"It ought to be splendid, Jim. When is it to be?"

"In about a month. Miss Fraser is coming to stay with aunt for three
whole months. Uncle Tom and I