e plan too."

"But I can't spout. And I'm pretty certain I'd promise the crowd
anything it asked for. Whether it would get it is another thing."

Hazel laughed, but she there and then mentally resolved that Sir Anson's
wish should meet with fulfilment--in certain contingencies, that is.

"What a rum thing it is to feel one's self out of leading-strings
again," went on Dick. "But I wonder when old Greenoak will turn up here
and give me marching orders, like he did at Haakdoorn. I shan't obey
this time. Though, I was forgetting, I shall have to give them to
myself."

When Harley Greenoak had returned to the Komgha he laughed to himself as
he learned what had become of his charge. Twice he had ridden over and
spent a day or two with the Waybridges, and from what he had seen there
he judged that his responsibility was nearing its end. But the fact of
his charge being in such good hands had left him free to follow out the
secret investigations and negotiations in which he was then engaged, and
the success or failure of which, both chances being about even, would be
of momentous import.

Before Hazel could reply there was a rush of dogs, and vast snarling and
barking as the brutes leapt at the horses, and one or two, incidentally,
at their riders. The latter on topping a rise had come upon a large
kraal, whose beehive-shaped huts stood in clusters, adjoining the
square, or circular, cattle or goat pens common to each.

In a moment Dick had curled the lash of his raw-hide whip round the
long, lithe body of a fine, tawny, black-muzzled greyhound, which was
savagely leaping at the hind quarters of the steed ridden by Hazel.
With a snarling, agonised yelp the beast dropped back howling, and for a
second or two the ardour of the others seemed checked. Then they came
on again.

Dick now turned his horse, and charging in among them, cut right and
left with his whip. The savage pack, demoralised, retired howling, and
by this time the riders were right abreast of the kraal.

The latter seemed now in a ferment. The ochre-smeared figures of
women--many of them with a brown human bundle on their backs--stamping
mealies in a rough wooden pestle, or smoking and gossiping in groups--
now got up, chattering and laughing shrilly; while the male inhabitants
of the place--quite a number--came swarming out of the huts, talking
volubly in their deep-toned bass, to see what was going on. But no
attempt was made to call off the