be dull now with
only an old fogey to put up with."

"Have I been dull before, Uncle Eph?" answered the girl, slipping her
arm through his. "And I think this isn't the first time I've had `only
an old fogey to put up with.'"

"No, it isn't. Well, young to young--that's the role of Nature, and he
is a fine young fellow that. I never saw a young 'un I took to so
much."

And old Ephraim Hesketh suddenly found himself being very much kissed.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

OF A FIGHT.

"Rather different sort of country this--eh, Dick?"

"Yes. But the worst of it is there's nothing to shoot."

"There never is where there are Kafir locations," rejoined Harley
Greenoak.

On either side of the road lay spread the green, undulating plains of
British Kaffraria, open, or dotted here and there with mimosa. The sky,
dazzling in its vivid blue, was without a cloud, and the air of the
winter midday warm and yet exhilarating. The Cape cart had just left
behind the steep slope of the Gonubi Hill, and was bowling along the Kei
Road, facing eastward.

"Think the Kafirs really do mean to kick up a row, Greenoak," said Dick,
as three ochre-smeared samples of that race strode by, favouring those
of the dominant one with a defiant stare.

"I'm dead sure of it. You see, they haven't had a fight for nearly a
quarter of a century, and now they're spoiling for one. I didn't care
to say so while we were down in the Colony though, for fear of setting
up a scare. It's simply the Donnybrook spirit. This squabble about the
Fingoes is a mere pretext."

"Well, I'm jolly glad," rejoined Dick Selmes. "It would have been a
proper sell to have come all this way and there to be no war after all."

"Sell? I'm hoping that same sell may be ours."

"What? You're hoping there'll be no war?"

"Certainly. Think what a row I should get into with your dad for
countenancing your taking part in it, Dick."

"Oh, don't you bother about that, old chap," was the breezy rejoinder.
"Didn't the dad leave me here to see all there was to be seen, and if
there was a jolly war and I didn't see something of it, why, I shouldn't
be seeing all there was to be seen? Besides, I've seen nothing of the
Kafirs yet."

"You'll see enough and to spare of them directly. Meanwhile you're
about to begin, for here we are at Draaibosch."

Our friend Dick had about recovered his normal spirits, the enjoyment of
travel, the ever-changing novelty of it at every turn, a