" he replied; "only about a hundred yards farther than where we met
this morning."

"Then you'll find the riding worse than you expect."

"Well, it will be practice," he said. "But I say, how that nigger of
yours scuffles along! He's leaving us quite behind."

"He is sure-footed and accustomed to the rocks," I said as I watched
Joeboy, who was getting higher and higher up the precipice to our left,
as well as higher up the pass. "He wants to get up to where he can look
over the Boers' position."

"He had better mind," said Denham. "You ought to have taken away those
bits of vanity before he went into action."

"What bits of vanity?" I said.

"Those white ostrich-feathers. They make him stand out so clear to a
shooter. Ah! he's down."

Just then Joeboy was seen to drop forward right out of sight.

"No," I said; "that was one of his jumps;" and I spoke confidently, for
I had often seen him make goat-like leaps when we had been out shooting
among the hills.

"You're wrong," said my companion confidently. "Poor fellow! let's get
level with the place where he tumbled. I'm sure that was a fall."

"Wait a few minutes," I said, "and you'll see him perhaps a hundred
yards farther on."

I proved to be quite right, for we soon saw Joeboy climbing steadily on
just as I had said, and he kept on getting higher and higher till we
were up to the spot where I had passed so unpleasant a night.

"My word, you did have a bad time of it! Why, if you had gone over
there it would have killed this beautiful little horse of yours."

"Then I shouldn't have found the Light Horse," I said quietly; but I
couldn't help feeling a bit of a shiver as I gazed at the depth below
where we had stopped.

After that, as we rode on, keeping a good lookout, I began to ask a few
questions about the war which had so suddenly broken out and come like a
surprise upon us at our quiet and retired home.

"Oh," said my companion, "it is only what many people expected. The
Boers have never been satisfied about being under England. Plenty of
them are sensible enough, and think that the proper thing to do is to
attend to their farms and grazing cattle; but there are a set of
discontented idiots among them who have stirred them up with a lot of
political matter, telling them they are slaves of England's tyrannical
rule, and that it is time to strike for their freedom, till they have
believed that they are ill-treated. So now they have risen,