Why stay any longer by "this ugly old stream"?--for so he called it. There was nothing to do, nothing to see. He turned to go back, and then the whole scene in its loneliness and desolation took a sudden grip of his young soul. The awe and wonder of the great, silent, solitary space overcame him. The river, instead of being a voice amidst the stillness, a living thing amidst the death around, was only another death. It seemed to flow from some-- "Waste land where no man comes, Or hath come, since the making of the world." Then all at once, by a very common trick of fancy, young John Grayson found himself at home--at home really--in happy England. His mother, dead a year ago, was there still. He saw her room: the table with her books and work, and her favourite clock upon it; a shawl she used to wear of some blue, shimmering stuff like silk;--he saw her face. And then, as suddenly, all was gone. He knew that she was dead. And he stood alone with the silent sky, the desolate earth, the gloomy river--an atom of life in the midst of a vast, dead world. Before he knew it the tears were on his cheek. This would never do. He was ashamed of himself, though there was no one there to see. Dashing the disgraceful drops aside, he started at a run to go back. After a time he stopped, in a space fairly clear of reeds, to look about him. He could see in the distance the clump of trees that marked the camping place, but it looked very far off. The low hills confused him; it would not be such an easy matter as he thought to return. He sat down to rest a little, for disappointment and discouragement made him feel suddenly very tired. But he soon sprang to his feet again with a shout. A familiar sound reached his ear, the long Australian "Coo-ee-en!" which his father had adopted as the most penetrating kind of call. He gave back the cry with all the strength of his lungs, and waved his handkerchief high in the air. Presently he saw his father coming towards him through the reeds, followed by two of the Arabs. He ran to him in high delight, his sad reflections gone into the vast limbo that engulfs boyish sorrows. "Father! father! I have found Euphrates." "Yes, my boy, but _I_ had some trouble to find _you_."