etful interest. "But, after all, we can survive the loss."

"But--he was such a nice-looking boy."

"Oho!" was the rejoinder, accompanied by a roar of laughter. "So that's
the way the cat jumps!"

"Don't be an idiot," answered the girl, but in a tone which seemed to
say the "chaff" was not altogether displeasing to her. "But you
remember the report we heard coming through Howick, about two men being
nearly carried over the Umgeni Fall to-day, while one was trying to save
the other. That's the hero of the story, depend upon it. I'd have got
it all out of him if you hadn't been in such a desperate hurry. And now
we don't even know who he is!"

"No more we do. Let's put an advertisement in the paper. That'll draw
him--eh? Such a nice-looking boy, too!" he added, mimicking her tone.

"Tom, you're a born idiot," she rejoined, blushing scarlet.

The "nice-looking boy" meanwhile was cantering homeward in the twilight,
building castles in the air at a furious rate. Those blue eyes--that
voice--hovered before his imagination even as a stray firefly or so
hovered before his path. It was long since he had heard the voice or
seen the face of any woman of birth and refinement. Anstey was not wont
to mix with such, and the few female acquaintances the latter owned,
though worthy people enough, were considerably his inferiors in the
social scale. At this time, indeed, his mind and heart were peculiarly
attuned to such impressions, by reason of his lonely and uncongenial
surroundings; more than ever, therefore, would a feeling of discontent,
of yearning home-sickness, arise in his mind. Then, by a turn of
retrospect, his memory went back to Mr Kingsland's hearty,
straightforward words of advice: "When you've got your foot in the
stirrup, keep it there. Stick to it, my lad, stick to it, and you'll do
well." And now he _had_ got his foot in the stirrup. Was he to kick it
out again in peevish disgust because the stirrup was a bit rusty? No;
he hoped he was made of better stuff than that. He must just persevere
and hope for better times.

He reached home just as the black cloud, which had been rolling up
nearer and nearer, with many a red flash and low rumble, began to break
into rain. Having hastily put up his horse in the tumble-down stable,
and seen him fed, he went indoors, only to find Anstey blind drunk and
snoring in an armchair. Utterly disgusted, he helped that worthy to
bed, and then, after a cold supp