ngs had happened which made the
old black-fellow sad and weary.

The journey was long over the mighty plain--so long that as a
black-fellow wandered he wore out the colour of his skin and became
white. Somewhere in the dim, unknown past, a legend told how some of the
black-fellows had really come back from the plain, reaching the earth
where the end of the plain touched it; but when they rejoined their
tribes they had not been recognized, and so had gone away again in
anger. None had come since then, but the tribes treasured up the hope
that some day the mistake their ancestors had made would be forgotten,
and those who found their way across the plain would come back and tell
them of the land above. The hope, fostered on legend and ceremony, grew
at length into a creed, and from a creed into a faith, and the time was
looked forward to when the wandering black-fellows, grown white in the
journey, should come back; for then it would be no longer necessary to
climb through the black patch, nor to fear the falling rope. Then would
drought or flood cease to trouble, for plenty of food and plenty of
water would be every man's share when the people of the great plain came
back.

When the old man was a piccaninny the story travelled from the south
that the white men had reached the earth again, and had come in tribes
and in tribes of tribes, more than the black-fellow could count, more
than the black-fellow could understand. When he was made a "young man,"
he was told of it, and told how men of his own tribe, who had gone up
through the coal-sack by the blazing rope, were coming back; and how,
when they came back, the black-fellow's life would be never-ending, with
food enough every day to satisfy his appetite, and no flood, no drought,
no sickness, nothing but life--free, happy, and enjoyable.

And the old man had seen the white men come.

He had seen them come with their flocks and herds--the food the
black-fellow knew was coming. He had seen them come with shouts and
rage when the black-fellow ate the food they brought him. He had seen
them swoop on a tribe at peace, without a sign that they sought for war,
till the warriors lay on the red earth, dead, slain by the power the
white men had. He had seen them ride where the children played; he had
seen them charge where the women stood; he had seen the gunyahs set on
fire, the war-spears burned, the tokens scorned, till his race had fled
from their tribal lands to the barr