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and which, when they came hooting out of his mouth, so astonished him: Do not shoot. I am a British object .
    It was, after all, the creature, which was so drawn towardsthem, that had begun to run and for a long moment kept him aloft on the rail, which he gripped with his toes, using his outstretched arms to steady himself, while the dog pranced and slashed the air with its yelping, the boy stood with the gun pointing, clouds rolled, the sky weighed on his neck, and the country, all swamp and forest one way, raw clearings the other, swung in a circle about him.
    He waited for a bullet to bring him down, or for the creature, or spirit, to decide it was time to rise upwards and lift him away. But it deserted him, and it was his body that brought him down. On a cry from the smallest of the children, he overbalanced, began to fall, and the next instant was on all fours on the other side.

3
    H E WAS TAKEN in by the McIvors, the family of the children who had found him, and given a place to sleep under a red blanket in a lean-to against the side of their hut. In return he helped Jock McIvor round the farm. He was a ready worker, at least to begin with, but could not settle or keep his mind on things; he did not stick, and was physically in too poor a state for the heaviest work. In this respect young Lachlan could run rings around him.
    There was, from the beginning, a bond between him and the three children that went back to their meeting at the fence. They felt a proprietary right to him, having seen him first, and he, with his old instinct for self-preservation, for making the most of a weak position, saw the advantage of placing himself in their protection. He let them lead him about like a dog – the dog too took a fancy to him – listened to their secrets, was shown all the bits of things that were precious to them.
    He in turn showed them a little of what he knew. He taught the girls to plait grass and make dillybags, to hollow out gourds, dig up the fat yellow or white roots that, once you had thumbed the dirt off, could be baked in the ashes, and to gather berries that yielded a burst of welcome moisture to the tongue or an astringent sweetness.
    Making the distinction between them which he had learned among the blacks, he taught Lachlan to track. But the boy anyway stood in a special light for him, and that too went back to the moment of their first meeting, when Lachlan had stepped out in front of the two girls, raised the ‘gun’ to his shoulder, and stood there, square and determined, aiming fairat his heart. It had taken him only a moment of course to see that it was just a stick, but that did not mean it was harmless. What it stood for, and the boy’s fearful but fearless stance, was more important than stick or gun, and had made an indelible impression on him. He could never look at Lachlan, even if all he was doing was larking about in a childish way, without seeing, in his small compact figure, the power he had laid claim to with the pretence of arms.
    His object always was to make himself agreeable to the girls, to play the pupil when they wanted to be teacher, the doll when they wanted someone to dress up. But he kept a watch on Lachlan, ready always if necessary to appease; and the boy, because he was very quick in his perceptions, felt it and knew his power. He led the man on an invisible leash, swaggering before the other children of the place, and only when they were alone together let out his natural affection.
    The girls, especially Janet, took a great interest in how he kept himself.
    ‘No, no, Gemmy dear, let me do it,’ she would say when he failed to button his shirt straight. Or, laughing at the way his hair stuck out in quills and would not be disciplined, ‘Sit still, now, there’s a good fellow, and I’ll brush it and make you neat. I’m giving you a nice parting, Gemmy, see?’, and little Meg would hold up the mirror, looking at him rather quizzically over the top of it, while Janet