My pen has had only happy writing to-do so far, and now! "You rogue!" Judy called, pretending to run very quickly.
Then the whole world seemed to rise up before her.
There was a tree falling, one of the great, gaunt, naked things that had been ringbarked long ago.

All day it had swayed to and fro, rotten through and through; now there came up across the plain a puff of wind, and down it went before it.

One wild ringing cry Judy gave, then she leaped across the ground, her arms outstretched to the little lad running with laughing eyes and lips straight to death.
The crash shook the trees around, the very air seemed splintered.
They had heard it--all the others--heard the wild cry and then the horrible thud.
How their knees shook what blanched faces they had as they rushed towards the sound! They lifted it off the little bodies--the long, silvered trunk with the gum dead and dried in streaks upon it.

Judy was face downwards, her arms spread out.
And underneath her was the General, a little shaken, mightily astonished, but quite unhurt.

Meg clasped him for a minute, but then laid him down, and gathered with the others close around Judy.
Oh, the little dark, quiet head, the motionless body, in its pink, crushed frock, the small, thin, outspread hands! "Judy!" Pip said, in a voice of beseeching agony.