n a silent listener, nodded assent. Old Hesketh
had--for him--taken an immense fancy to Dick since hearing of his
shooting the buffalo bull in the Addo Bush, and that alone and with a
single bullet. He was far too plucky a young fellow to be allowed to
commit suicide in such an unsatisfactory cause as this, he decided.

"Don't let him cut into any such foolishness, Greenoak," he went on.
"Keep your eye on him, Greenoak. Keep your eye on him."

And Greenoak promised he would. Then he went to bed, and, contrary to
his usual custom, did not go to sleep immediately, but lay awake
thinking. And at the same time precisely the same thing was holding
good of Dick Selmes.

Now, in the course of the next two or three days, while the latter
seldom missed an opportunity of plying his host with questions regarding
Slaang Kloof, Harley Greenoak never opened his mouth on the subject. He
seemed to treat it as a mere incident: a strange incident, it was true,
but still an incident, and he had come across too many such in the
course of a life adventurous beyond most lives to deem one incident,
more or less, worth making any fuss about. He seemed, in short, to have
dismissed it from his mind.

Consequently, it is strange that a day or two later, Harley Greenoak
might have been seen--were there say one to see him--standing before the
entrance of Slaang Kloof alone.

His strong, bearded, sun-tanned face was set and thoughtful; his gnarled
hands were closed round the barrels of a double gun, whose stock was
grounded; and, slung round him, was a sort of bundle that bulged. The
rifle barrel held a Martini cartridge, the smooth-bore a heavy charge of
Treble A buckshot.

He stood gazing into the place of fear, as though reading every tree and
bush in its sombre forest depths.

As a matter of fact, he was there to solve its secret. Old Hesketh, to
whom his reputation was known as a clearer-up of many a dark and
blood-fraught mystery of the veldt, and who was an old friend of his
into the bargain, had sent for him with that express object, and, as it
was an entirely out-of-the-way and new part of the country to show his
charge, he had heartily welcomed the idea. But he had no notion
whatever of counting his said charge into the adventure with him.

He looked at the two jutting rock spurs as though calculating the
distance of one from the other. Then he walked steadily forward until
well within the portals of the sinister and fa