k knew.

Again he wondered whether Hesketh had brought about the situation with a
purpose. Hesketh was a mine of natural shrewdness, and here was scope
for it. Dick Selmes had spent some three weeks on this wild and remote
place, roughing it as he had probably never dreamed of roughing it, his
sole companions one old and one elderly man--Greenoak was modest, you
see. Then, enter a bright, pretty, taking girl, who makes the rough
places, as by magic, smooth, imports the refinement to which his charge
has been accustomed, with one sweep of the wand, and whose personality
is in itself a supplement to the sunshine. No contrast could be more
strongly marked. Assuredly if Hesketh had of his own intuition brought
off such a dramatic stroke, why, Hesketh was more of a genius than the
acquaintance of that rugged old recluse would have given him credit for
being. But this reflection did not tend to lighten Harley Greenoak's
private disquietude.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

GOOD NEWS.

"When are you going to shoot another back for us, Mr Selmes?" Hazel
Brandon was saying. "As officer in charge of the Commissariat
Department, it's my duty to tell you that if you don't we shall have to
begin on mutton, and it's your especial mission to keep us in game.
So--when are you?"

"When you come and help me do it."

"Help you? Yes--like the other evening when we went to _voor-ly_ for a
bush-buck over Slaang Draai, and you talked so much that although we sat
there till it was dark none came out. Now what sort of `help' is that?"

He looked down into the bright, teasing face, and thought he had
seldom--or was it ever?--looked upon any sight which delighted him more.

"Well, you helped me to talk anyhow," he said. "Now didn't you?"

One form of sport was to gain a point overlooking this or that bushy
kloof about an hour before sundown and sit still, waiting till the
bush-bucks began to move. Thus a shot was to be obtained when one
showed upon an open space. Dick Selmes, who had become a very fair
rifle shot, had bagged several this way. The occasion to which the girl
had referred was one on which he had persuaded her to accompany him--
with the remit described.

"Never mind," he went on, without waiting for her answer. "It was no
end jolly all the same. Wasn't it?"

"I don't know. I seem to remember it became no end cold," she laughed.
"But you're trying to get away from the point. You must go and shoot a
buck for me thi