e--well, he had struggled with all the instinct of self-preservation,
yet had struggled in vain. He was bound, and the bonds were of a
captivity that was very, very sweet.

Yet, nothing lasts. This love of his latter-day life stirring up into a
volcanic blaze of activity feelings not only dead and buried, but which
he had been wont to scoff at as impossible of existence--how was it to
end? In the prosaic, hard-and-fast knot of a legal bond? That, then,
would be the beginning of the end. Nothing lasts. The prose, even the
vulgarity, of a commonplace tie would be the beginning of
disenchantment, disillusion. What then? Thus a sure and certain
foresight into the future ran through the glowing, lotus-eating dream of
the present, yet, with all its dark and neutral-tinted shades, only
seemed to throw out the warm sun-waves of the present into greater
contrast.

"I say, Musgrave, I can't congratulate myself on having the liveliest of
travelling companions," said Darrell, with a grin. "Do you know that
it's exactly forty-seven minutes since you've let fall a word? I've
been timing you."

Roden started.

"The deuce you have! Excuse me, Darrell, I sometimes get that way. I
believe you're right. Well, I'll make up for it now, anyway."

The other grinned again, but said no more on the subject, and the two
men pursued their way at a quick, easy pace, now halting to off-saddle
at some farmhouse, now in the veldt. But Roden afforded his companion
no further pretext for rallying him on account of his silence.

That night they slept at a Boer's farm on the border of the hostile
ground. The worthy Dutchman and his numerous progeny were in a high
state of alarm, for rumours had come through his native hands that whole
locations of Gaikas, hitherto peaceful, had risen in arms and joined
Sandili, who was now trying to break through the not very closely drawn
cordon of patrols, and take refuge in the dense forest fastnesses of the
Amatola. He and his were going to trek into laager at once, and when he
learned the destination of the two Englishmen, he stared at them as
though they were ghosts already.

"Nay what. You'll never get through," he said, as they took their
leave. "Your lives are not worth that," flinging away a grain of salt,
"if you try. Besides, it is very wrong. It is laughing in the face of
the good God. You will come to harm, and you will deserve it."

But Darrell's laugh was loud and irreverent a