wed from the
store for the occasion."

"Murder be--um!--somethinged!" said Suffield. "These baboons are the
most mischievous _schelms_ out. They have discovered that young lamb is
good, the brutes! Sympathy wasted, my dear child."

But when they reached Stoffel Van Wyk's farm they found, to Mona's
intense relief, that that typical Boer and all his house were away from
home. This they elicited with difficulty between the savage bayings of
four or five great ugly bullet-headed dogs, which could hardly be
restrained from assailing the new arrivals by the Kaffir servant who
gave the information.

"We'll go on at once, then, Musgrave," said Suffield. "Stoffel's a very
decent fellow, and won't mind us shooting on his farm; though, of
course, we had to call at the house as a matter of civility."

The place for which they were bound was a long, flat-topped mountain,
whose summit, belted round with a wall of cliff, was only to be gained
here and there where the rock had yawned away into a deep gully. It was
along the slopes at the base of the rocks that bucks were likely to be
put up.

"We'll leave the horses here with Piet," said Suffield, "and steal up
quietly and look over that ridge of rocks under the _krantz_. We'll
most likely get a shot."

The ridge indicated sloped away at right angles from the face of a tall
cliff. It was the very perfection of a place for a stalk. Dismounting,
they turned over their horses to the "after-rider."

"Hold hard, Miss Ridsdale. Don't be in such a hurry," whispered Roden
warningly. "If you chance to dislodge so much as a pebble, the bucks
down there'll hear it, if there are any."

Mona, who was all eagerness and excitement, took the hint. But a riding
habit is not the most adaptable of garments for stalking purposes, and
she was conscious of more than one look, half of warning, half of
vexation, on the part of her male companions daring the advance.

Lying flat on their faces they peered over the ridge, and their patience
was rewarded. The ground sloped abruptly down for about a hundred feet,
forming, with the jutting elbow of the cliff, a snug grassy _hoek_, or
corner. Here among boulders and fragments of rock scattered about, were
seven rhybok, two rams and five ewes.

They had been grazing; some were so yet, but others had thrown up their
heads, and were listening intently.

They were barely two hundred yards distant. Quiet, cautious as had been
the advance, th