THE SEA-BIRDS’ MESSAGE.

THERE is a great lake in one of the inland
districts of Northern Australia. It is closed in
by green ranges, which slope down to a beach
of silverysand. It has no outlet for its waters,
which are salt as the sea. Pelicans and wild
swans haunt its shores, and myriads of sea gulls
and marine birds hover upon its calm surface.

The lake is almost always still, for it is very

shallow and in seasons of great drought its

waters dry up altogether, and there is only to ee
be seen a vast basin of shining sand. eae

But this does not happen once in a great many years. At most times it has the appear-
ance of an untroubled sea, for it is not possible to see from one side across to its furthermost
shore. Tiny wavelets sparkle in the daylight as far as the eye can reach. The moon rises
from its waters, and the sun goes down beneath them in a glory of pink and gold, and the
horizon clouds take strange shapes which make them seem like the gates of some enchanted
city, or the trees in a dream garden.

Little Janie Galvin used to have all kinds of fancies about the lake and the distant
invisible shore. She was an odd imaginative child, and would remain on the beach some-
times for hours together, dreaming her child-dreams, and keeping so still. that the pelicans
and ibises would come quite close to her, and the sea-gulls would swoop down and circle
round.her and her sickly little brother who lay sleeping in the warm sand at her feet; and
they would perch on the rocks near her, and would flap their wings and utter their strange
discordant cries, till she could almost fancy they had a story to tell her, or a message to
give from that land over the sea—for the lake was the sea to Janie; she could imagine no
ocean vaster. :

The ‘sea-gulls made her think of the wild swans of Hans Andersen’s story—the
mistress on. the station where her father was employed had sent her Hans Andersen
one Christmas time, and she had a notion that they wanted to take her and little Dick to
the opposite shore, and that there she should find Death’s Garden, where God the Great
Gardener gathers His flower-angels, and that there her own mother who was dead would
come and meet them, and would take little Dick in her arms, and would lead Janie by the
hand—and so they would wander about together in the beautiful garden, and there would
be no more harsh words or cruel blows; no more frighteried quiverings of little Dick’s
feeble body, no more sobbings to sleep after unjust punishment, no more lonely longing
for the love which these two poor little children had lost when their mother left them.

Janie remembered her mother well, but Dick was only a tiny baby when she died.
It was to Janie that the mother had given the little boy, and almost her last words had
been, “ Remember, darling, to take care of baby ; don’t let any one be unkind to baby.”

Perhaps the poor mother had been thinking then of what did happen a little later when