nal lie on his
death-bed; and, if his yarn's true, I'm a rich man for life--if I can
only find the place, that is," he adds bitterly. "And I've had four
shies at it. Well, perhaps the fifth is going to be lucky."

With which consoling reflection the thinker rises from his stony
resting-place, revealing as he does so a tall, straight figure,
admirably proportioned. Suddenly he starts, and a sallow paleness comes
over the bronzed, handsome features. For he is conscious of a strange
giddiness. A mist seems to float before his eyes, shutting out
completely the glare of the burning veldt.

"Never that cursed up-country fever again?" he murmurs, to himself, in
real alarm.

And for the latter there is reason--reason in the abnormal and unhealthy
heat of the terrible drought--reason in his utter isolation, the vast
distance between himself and a fellow-countryman--let alone such
considerations as medical aid.

Recovering himself with an effort, he strolls on towards the house.
There is no sign of life about the place as he approaches, unless a
couple of miserable, fever-stricken sheep, panting and wheezing in the
shade of the kraal wall, constitute such. But, dead and tomb-like as it
looks outside, there is something refreshing in the coolness of the
inner room as he enters. A rough tablecloth is laid, and a knife and
fork. The walls are papered with pictures from illustrated prints, and
are hung with swinging shelves containing a goodly number of books of
all sorts. A few chairs and a couch, the latter much the worse for
wear, constitute the furniture; and, on the whole, what with pipes,
stray bits of saddlery, and miscellaneous odds and ends of every
description, the place is about as untidy as the average bachelor abode
is apt to be within the pale of civilisation, let alone away on the High
Veldt. The floor is of hardened clay, and there is no ceiling--nothing
between the inmate of the room and the bare and ragged thatch, one
drawback to which arrangement being that a fine, lively tarantula will
occasionally drop down upon the head or shoulder of the said inmate.

A call of "Kaatje. Dinner bring," is soon productive of that meal, in
so far as the remnant of a half-starved and wholly unnutritious chicken,
dressed up with so insipid an ingredient as some plain boiled rice, can
be said to constitute dinner. It is productive, simultaneously, of an
extraordinary specimen of humanity.

A creature of mahogany hu