kicked down our throats? For remember they
were a round dozen, and we only two, and some of these very ones, I
happen to know, are pretty tough customers. Here, Frank. Take the
reins, so long. There are a couple of fine _pauw_. Think we can get
any nearer?"

"No. Let go at them from the cart."

They had just topped a light swell, and there, about two hundred and odd
yards from the road, stalked the great bustards. Quickly Colvin slipped
from the buggy, and keeping on its other side, rifle in hand, watched
his chance. Taking a careful and steady aim, he fired. Both birds
rose, and winged their flight, but, after a few yards, the hindermost
half dropped, then, flopping along a little further, came heavily to the
earth, where it lay with wings outspread and quite dead.

"That's good!" observed Colvin; "I knew he'd got it, heard the bullet
`klop'."

They picked up the splendid bird and regained the road. But before they
had gone half a mile they made out a horseman riding furiously after
them as though in pursuit.

"It's old Sarel Van der Vyver," said Frank, looking back. "Let's give
him a gallop, eh? He looks in a devil of a rage."

"No--no! We must smooth him down," answered Colvin, drawing the pace in
to a slow trot. Very soon their pursuer galloped up, and they made out
an old Boer in a weather-beaten white chimney-pot hat, and wearing a
bushy grey beard. He seemed, as Frank had said, "in a devil of a rage,"
and brandished in his hand a long-barrelled Martini.

"_Daag_, Oom Sarel!" called out the two in the buggy.

But the old man met this amenity with a torrent of abuse. What did they
mean by coming into his veldt and shooting his game without his leave,
and scaring his ostriches all over the place? He did not keep game to
be shot by _verdomde rooineks_, not he. And much more to the same
effect.

Both were rather surprised. They had never been on other than the
friendliest of terms with this old man, and now he was rating them as
though he had never seen them before in their lives. Well, here was
another very significant sign of the times. But it gave Colvin an idea.

"Take the bird, Oom Sarel," he said, making as though he would pull it
out from the back of the buggy. "I only shot it for the fun of the
thing--and besides, it was possible that Andries Botma might be at
Spring Holt when we got back, and a fine _pauw_ might come in handy for
the supper of the Patriot."

The effect of