leave the country, for from the commanding height of a
neighbouring tree Grenville constantly saw large parties carefully
patrolling the wide stretch of veldt lying between the rock and the
great subterranean roadway, by which the little party hoped to escape.

And now, having nothing else to do, Grenville turned his mind to the
acquisition of wealth, and soon had Winfield at his favourite
occupation, aided by Leigh and himself, whilst the Zulus kept watch and
ward, and the young girls enjoyed to the full their newly-acquired and
delicious sense of freedom.

A neighbouring stream proved to be prodigiously rich in alluvial
deposits of gold, and at the end of a week of hard work, the mining
party found themselves possessed of close upon sixty pounds weight of
the precious metal, mainly in small nuggets. In one pocket alone, which
fell to the lot of Leigh, _twelve pounds of gold was found and taken out
in less than as many minutes_, the bed of the river being a regular Tom
Tiddler's ground.

The method of procedure adopted by Winfield was somewhat curious, yet
withal, extremely simple. Starting about two miles above their shelter,
which was as far afield as the party dared to go, he followed the course
of the stream down to, and even for some little distance beyond, the
rock, and wherever he came across an eddy formed by the stones, placed a
little flag on the bank to mark the spot; then damming up the narrow
stream with rocks and fallen trees, he temporarily turned its course
into an adjacent hollow in the ground, and set his party to work in the
river-bed, on the spots where the eddies, as indicated by the flags, had
formerly disported themselves.

The results were pleasing beyond their wildest anticipations, and in
less than a fortnight the little river was again running peacefully
along its former course, and our friends had acquired gold to the value
of _nearly twenty-five thousand pounds sterling_--as much, in fact, as
they could well carry. Only the Zulus looked on stolidly, and
internally wondered how such a mighty warrior as "the Inkoos their
father" could trouble his head about the "shining yellow sand."
Winfield told the cousins that the mountains in which the stream had its
source had always, amongst miners, borne the reputation of a veritable
El Dorado, but the insuperable difficulty--indeed, impossibility--of
access from the outside world had rendered it the reverse of likely that
Nature's stores--at