s."

"It's eerie, all the same," she said, with another shiver.

The point of which remark was that the cattle, turned out at night to
graze around the homestead, had collected at a place down by the kraals,
where sheep were slaughtered, and with their noses to the ground, were
emitting a series of groaning noises, culminating in a sort of shrill
bellow. Then they would scurry away for a few yards, and returning to
the blood-saturated spot, would repeat the performance again and again.
After all, it was not an unusual one. On moonlight nights, especially,
would it be enacted. To-night, however, in the darkness, the effect was
particularly weird and dismal.

"Talking of old Hesketh," went on Dick, bent on taking her mind off
dismal fancyings, "I wonder how the fine old chap will cotton to me as a
nephew, eh?"

"Now, Dick, you're getting `too previous,'" she answered, with a laugh.
"Why, what can that be?"

A glow was suffusing the far sky, growing brighter and brighter. It
seemed to be in the direction of their ride of the day before, "Moon
rising, I suppose," said Dick, re-lighting his pipe.

"No. It's not quite in the right place for that. Look. There's
another."

At an interval of space to the left, another similar glow appeared. A
very ugly and uncomfortable inspiration now took hold of Dick Selmes'
mind, but he was not going to share it with his companion.

"Grass fires," he said. "That's what it will be. And now, Hazel dear,
although it's a vast bit of self-denial to me, I believe we'd better go
in. I've a very strong suspicion you've caught cold. What'll Elsie
say? That it was my fault, of course. She herds you, if anything,
rather closer than Greenoak tries to herd me."

"Yes. We are both in leading-strings," laughed Hazel. "But it's a good
thing I brought her up here, and made her stay, or they'd have been all
sixes and sevens. She's as good as any half-dozen of these lazy, dirty
Kafir or Fugo girls, and now they can't even get them."

Mrs Waybridge had returned to the sitting-room and was awaiting them.

"Why, Hazel dear, you look quite white and shivery," she said. "You've
been catching cold; yet, it's a warm evening."

"I believe she has, Mrs Waybridge," said Dick. "I should give her
something hot, and turn her straight in."

Hazel smiled to herself at the airs of proprietorship he was beginning
to assume. But it was with a very affectionate pressure of the hand
that she ba