e lifeless; but he carried them and laid them on two nests
of red ants. Then he sat down at some little distance and watched them.
The ants quickly covered the bodies, cleaned them rapidly of the wet
slime, and soon Byamee noticed the muscles of the girls twitching.
"Ah," he said, "there is life, they feel the sting of the ants."

Almost as he spoke came a sound as of a thunder-clap, but the sound
seemed to come from the ears of the girls. And as the echo was dying
away, slowly the girls rose to their feet. For a moment they stood
apart, a dazed expression on their faces. Then they clung together,
shaking as if stricken with a deadly fear. But Byamee came to them and
explained how they had been rescued from the kurreahs by him. He bade
them to beware of ever bathing in the deep holes of the Narran, lest
such holes be the haunt of kurreahs.

Then he bade them look at the water now at Boogira, and he said:

"Soon will the black swans find their way here, the pelicans and the
ducks; where there was dry land and stones in the past, in the future
there will be water and water-fowl, from henceforth; when the Narran
runs it will run into this hole, and by the spreading of its waters
will a big lake be made." And what Byamee said has come to pass, as the
Narran Lake shows, with its large sheet of water, spreading for miles,
the home of thousands of wild fowl.

5. GOOLOO THE MAGPIE, AND THE WAHROOGAH

Gooloo was a very old woman, and a very wicked old woman too, as this
story will tell. During all the past season, when the grass was thick
with seed, she had gathered much doonburr, which she crushed into meal
as she wanted it for food. She used to crush it on a big flat stone
with small flat stones--the big stone was called a dayoorl. Gooloo
ground a great deal of the doonburr seed to put away for immediate use,
the rest she kept whole, to be ground as required.

Soon after she had finished her first grinding, a neighbouring tribe
came along and camped near where she was. One day the men all went out
hunting, leaving the women and the children in the camp. After the men
had been gone a little while, Gooloo the magpie came to their camp to
talk to the women. She said, "Why do you not go hunting too? Many are
the nests of the wurranunnahs round here, and thick is the honey in
them. Many and ripe are the bumbles hanging now on the humble trees;
red is the fruit of the grooees, and opening with ripeness the fruit of
th