Mr. Gillet remembered there was no one to act but himself.  He went with Pip to the stockman’s hut; and they took the door off its leather hinges and carried it down the hill.

“I will lift her,” he said, and passed his arms around the little figure, raising her slowly, slowly, gently upwards, laying her on the door with her face to the sky.

But she moaned—­oh, how she moaned!

Pip, whose heart had leapt to his throat at the first sign of life, almost went mad as the little sounds of agony burst from her lips.

They raised the stretcher, and bore her up the hill to the little brown hut at the top.

Then Mr. Gillet spoke, outside the doorway, to Meg and Pip, who seemed dazed, stunned.

“It will be hours before we can get help, and it is five now,” he said.  “Pip, there is a doctor staying at Boolagri ten miles along the road.  Fetch him—­run all the way.  I will go back home—­fourteen miles.  Miss Meg, I can’t be back all at once.  I will bring a buggy; the bullock-dray is too slow and jolting, even when it comes back.  You must watch by her, give her water if she asks—­there is nothing else you can do.”

“She is dying?” Meg said—­“dying?”

He thought of all that might happen before he brought help, and dare not leave her unprepared.

“I think her back is broken,” he said, very quietly.  “If it is, it means death.”

Pip fled away down the road that led to the doctor’s.

Mr. Gillet gave a direction or two, then he looked at Meg.

“Everything depends on you; you must not even think of breaking down,” he said.  “Don’t move her, watch all the time.”

He moved away towards the lower road.

She sprang after him.

“Will she die while you are away?—­no one but me.”

Her eyes were wild, terrified.

“God knows!” he said, and turned away.

It was almost more than he could bear to go and leave this little girl alone to face so terrible a thing.  “God help me!” she moaned, hurrying back, but not looking at the hot, low-hanging sky.  “Help me, God!  God, help me, help me!”

CHAPTER XXI When the Sun Went Down

Such a sunset!

Down at the foot of the grass hill there was a flame-coloured sky, with purple, soft clouds massed in banks high up where the dying glory met the paling blue.  The belt of trees had grown black, and stretched sombre, motionless arms against the orange background.  All the wind had died, and the air hung hot and still, freighted with the strange silence of the bush.

And at the top of the hill, just within the doorway of the little brown hut, her wide eyes on the wonderful heavens, Judy lay dying.  She was very quiet now, though she had been talking—­talking of all sorts of things.  She told them she had no pain at all.

“Only I shall die when they move me,” she said.