ds for the gift of life.

When my clothes were sufficiently dry I dressed and went on. It was now
fairly late in the afternoon. I caught sight of another farmhouse, so
I went to it. The men-folk were away, but a dear old lady of ample
proportions and kindly countenance was standing in her garden mourning
the damage wrought therein by the heavy weather of the past week. I
asked for a spade and a rake; within little more than an hour I had
vastly improved things. Vegetables and flowers, which grew side by side
in an eccentric jumble, had been flattened out by the rain into a
wallow of mud. I obtained the cover of a packing-case; this I split up,
and a judicious use of the fragments, together with some string, soon
showed that little irreparable damage had been done.

Two small children, a boy and a girl they were grandchildren of the old
lady made my task entertaining by virtue of their quaint and original
talk. However, they rather embarrassed me by bringing quantities of
biscuits and coffee, being distressed when I was unable to consume all.
At dusk the proprietor of the farm, with his wife and a baby, returned
in a cart. They warmly seconded the old lady's invitation for me to
stay over the night. So I slept in a real bed an experience I had not
enjoyed for years. I hope that kindly roof-tree still stands firm, and
that the little children have not alone prospered, but taken after
their immediate forbears.

Next morning I started very early, for I felt I had dawdled enough. I
passed down the long, lovely Intshanga Ridge, and must have walked
well, for I reached Pine Town fairly early in the afternoon. Here I met
a man whose name I have forgotten; he also was about to walk to
D'Urban. We did not, however, go together, for the reason that I had
made up my mind to go by a direct route over the Berea, whilst he had
some special reason for taking a more round-about course.

I passed a number of coolie huts, each standing in a little pineapple
patch. I spent ninepence of my capital in the purchase of a dozen
pines, getting three separate lots of four at three-pence per lot. It
was late in the afternoon when I reached D'Urban. The date was the 27th
of January, so I had spent twenty four days on the road. Considering
the weather I had encountered, I had not done so badly. Next morning I
read in a newspaper that the man with whom I had foregathered on the
previous day had died from the effects of the bite of a mamba; the
re