ill leave my bones there; I am getting old, and I want
peace, as I had it in Australia. As for the story you speak of, it is
simply this:--

Four or five miles up the river from Garoopna stood a solitary hut,
sheltered by a lofty, bare knoll, round which the great river chafed
among the bowlders. Across the stream was the forest sloping down in
pleasant glades from the mountain; and behind the hut rose the plain
four or five hundred feet overhead, seeming to be held aloft by the
blue-stone columns which rose from the river-side.

In this cottage resided a shepherd, his wife, and one little boy, their
son, about eight years old,--a strange, wild, little bush child, able to
speak articulately, but utterly without knowledge or experience of human
creatures, save of his father and mother; unable to read a line; without
religion of any sort or kind; as entire a little savage, in fact, as you
could find in the worst den in your city, morally speaking, and yet
beautiful to look on; as active as a roe, and, with regard to natural
objects, as fearless as a lion.

As yet unfit to begin labor, all the long summer he would wander about
the river-bank, up and down the beautiful rock-walled paradise where he
was confined, sometimes looking eagerly across the water at the waving
forest boughs, and fancying he could see other children far up the
vistas beckoning to him to cross and play in that merry land of shifting
lights and shadows.

It grew quite into a passion with the little man to get across and play
there; and one day when his mother was shifting the hurdles, and he was
handing her the strips of green hide which bound them together, he said
to her, "Mother, what country is that across the river?"

"The forest, child."

"There's plenty of quantongs over there, eh, mother, and raspberries?
Why mayn't I get across and play there?"

"The river is too deep, child, and the Bunyip lives in the water under
the stones."

"Who are the children that play across there?"

"Black children, likely."

"No white children?"

"Pixies; don't go near 'em, child; they'll lure you on, Lord knows where.
Don't get trying to cross the river, now, or you'll be drowned."

But next day the passion was stronger on him than ever. Quite early on
the glorious, cloudless, midsummer day he was down by the river-side,
sitting on a rock, with his shoes and stockings off, paddling his feet
in the clear tepid water, and watching the million fish in t