her, yet he
never talks about it, they say. I can't tell you how proud I am to have
made his acquaintance."

"Shall I tell him so, for here he comes?" said Dick, mischievously.
"Now, or when you're not there?"

"If you do I'll never speak to you again. And yet I don't know that I'd
greatly care if you did."

They had been waiting as directed, where the horses had been left, and
now the other two were coming up.

"You've made a quick job of that, Greenoak," said Dick.

"Yes. But I only took charge of the more difficult part, Kleinbooi'll
do the rest. It's a good skin, Dick, and ought to look well in your
hall, or wherever you stick up such things."

Dick stared.

"But it's yours," he cried. "Why, it was your shot--and a jolly fine
shot too. Don't know where I'd have been but for it."

"Oh, that's all right. I've nowhere to keep trophies and you have.
You'll be able to hang it under the buffalo head." And the speaker
swung himself into the saddle, and resumed his conversation with old
Hesketh.

"There!" exclaimed Hazel. "Isn't that like him? And you hardly said
thank you."

"Greenoak doesn't like much thanking. It seems to hurt him; sets him on
the shrink, don't you know."

"I can quite believe that," rejoined Hazel. "Now--you can help me to
mount."

The while, the subject under discussion was some way ahead, with
Hesketh. They were in fact passing the scene of that other tragedy.

"Not much trace of that affair," Hesketh was saying as he glanced keenly
around. "Tell you what, though, I wonder yon tiger didn't put an end to
the `mystery' long ago, and save us the trouble. Ho-ho!"

"I don't," rejoined Greenoak, quietly. "It'd have to be a very smart
tiger indeed to get the blind side of a veteran Bushman. The `mystery'
was a darn sight more likely to scoff the tiger than the tiger was to
scoff the `mystery.'"

CHAPTER NINE.

A WAY OUT.

Postal delivery at Haakdoornfontein was, as an institution,
non-existent; and when old Hesketh desired communication with or from
the outside world he obtained it by dispatching a boy to the nearest
field-cornet's, some sixteen or seventeen miles away. This, for obvious
reasons, he did not do very often.

Harley Greenoak was seated on a stone, on the shaded side of the
shearing-house, thinking. The shade was almost too cool, for there was
a forecasting touch of crisp winter in the clear atmosphere and vivid
blue of the cloudless sky. He coul