They remained motionless until it had reached nearly a hundred yards, and then, with a sudden half-real, half-assumed, but altogether delightful trepidation, ran forward and caught up with it again.

This they repeated two or three times until both themselves and the excitement were exhausted, and they again plodded on hand in hand.

Presently Clarence uttered a cry.
"My! Susy--look there!" The rear wagon had once more slipped away from them a considerable distance.

Between it and them, crossing its track, a most extraordinary creature had halted.
At first glance it seemed a dog--a discomfited, shameless, ownerless outcast of streets and byways, rather than an honest stray of some drover's train.

It was so gaunt, so dusty, so greasy, so slouching, and so lazy! But as they looked at it more intently they saw that the grayish hair of its back had a bristly ridge, and there were great poisonous-looking dark blotches on its flanks, and that the slouch of its haunches was a peculiarity of its figure, and not the cowering of fear.