en revealed; but it so fell out that two other men in the
township were ill with a mysterious disease which looked so much like
smallpox that a doctor was sent for in all haste because of the danger
to other people.

The nearest medical man lived at Mostyn, and he had not been there long,
and was indeed on the point of going somewhere else, because the people
of Mostyn seemed to have no use for doctors, and only died of drinking
bad whisky.

With so little chance of work the doctor was in a fair way of being
starved out; so when the call came for him to go to Latimer, eager
though he was for work, he had to admit that he had no horse to ride and
no money with which to hire one.

But when men are desperate enough to ride fifty miles on the off chance
of finding a doctor it is not likely that a trifle of this kind will
turn them from their purpose. A horse for the doctor was quickly
forthcoming, and he rode out of Mostyn in the company of his escort,
just as the cart which was bringing the weekly mail entered the town.

"Would you like to wait and claim your mail, doctor?" asked the man who
rode on his right hand.

"No, thanks; I do not expect any letters," replied the man of medicine,
and a pang stole into his heart as he thought of the big family of seven
motherless children in far-away England, whom he had virtually cast off,
just because he was writing himself down a failure, and would not be an
object of pity to his friends and relations.

If only he had known it, there was a letter for him by that mail, a
letter which had come from England, written by Mr. Runciman, and posted
on the very day the children sailed for Sydney. The writer confessed
that he ought to have followed his first letter with a second long
before this; perhaps he ought to have waited until a letter came from
Dr. Plumstead before letting the children start, but there had been so
many difficulties in the way of taking care of them in England, and so
on, and so on, which in plain English meant that as Mrs. Runciman was
not willing to have them under her roof, the harassed guardian had not
known what to do with them.

But it was a long time before that letter really reached the hands for
which it was intended, and then it was Nealie who handed it to her
father, and at his request read it to him.

It was a horrible journey for the doctor and his escort. The demon
drought was stalking through the land, there were wicked little
whirlwinds to r