ld not believe. "Spirits such as you," he said
sullenly, "need no food, and go whither they will by wish alone."

"I tell you I am not a spirit, and as hungry as I don't particularly
want to be again. Here, look at the back of my trousers, caked three
inches deep in mud. If I were a spirit, do you think I would slide
about on my coat-tails like that? Do you think that if I could travel
by volition I would slip down these infernal cliffs on my pants' seat
as I have just done? And as for materialism--look at this fist; it
punched you just now! Surely there was nothing spiritual in that
knock?''

"No," said the savage, rubbing his head, "it was a good, honest rap, so
I must take you at your word. If you are indeed man, and hungry, it
will be a charity to feed you; if you are a spirit, it will at least be
interesting to watch you eat; so sit down, and let's see what I have in
my wallet."

So cross-legged we squatted opposite each other on the table rock, and,
feeling like another Sindbad the Sailor, I watched my new friend fumble
in his bag and lay out at his side all sorts of odds and ends of
string, fish-hooks, chewing-gum, material for making a fire, and so on,
until at last he came to a package (done up, I noted with delight, in a
broad, green leaf which had certainly been growing that morning), and
unrolling it, displayed a lump of dried meat, a few biscuits, much
thicker and heavier than the honey-cakes of the Hither folk, and
something that looked and smelt like strong, white cheese.

He signed to me to eat, and you may depend upon it I was not slow in
accepting the invitation. That tough biltong tasted to me like the
tenderest steak that ever came from a grill; the biscuits were
ambrosial; the cheese melted in my mouth as butter melts in that of the
virtuous; but when the old man finished the quaint picnic by inviting
me to accompany him down to the waterside for a drink, I shook my head.
I had a great respect for dead queens and kings, I said, but there were
too many of them up above to make me thirsty this morning; my respect
did not go to making me desire to imbibe them in solution!

Afterwards I chanced to ask him what he had been picking up just now
along the margin, and after looking at me suspiciously for a minute he
asked--

"You are not a thief?" On being reassured on that point he continued:
"And you will not attempt to rob me of the harvest for which I venture
into this ghost-haunted glen, w