full. Eanswyth, watching her
cousin during the year that he had been living with them, had felt her
regard and respect for him deepen more and more. Many a time had his
judgment and tact availed to settle matters of serious difficulty and,
of late, actual peril, brought about by the hot-headed imperiousness of
her husband in his dealings with the natives. Living a year beneath the
same roof with anybody in ordinary work-a-day intercourse affords the
best possible opportunity of studying the character of that person.
Eanswyth, we say, had so studied the character of her husband's cousin
and had pronounced it well-nigh flawless. But of this more elsewhere.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Who are those people, Ncanduku?" said Eustace, after a few preliminary
puffs in silence. "Except yourself and Sikuni here, they are all
strangers to me. I do not seem to know one of their faces."

The chief shrugged his shoulders, emitting a thick puff of smoke from
his bearded lips.

"They are strangers," he answered. "They are Ama-Gcaleka, and are
returning to their own country across the Kei. They have been visiting
some of their friends at Nteya's kraal."

"But why are they all so heavily armed? We are not at war."

"_Whau_, Ixeshane! You know there is trouble just now with the Amafengu
[Fingoes]. These men might be molested on their way back to their own
country. They are afraid, so they go armed."

"Who are they afraid of? Not the Amafengu, their dogs? Why should they
go armed and travel in such strength?"

The chief fixed his glance upon his interlocutor's face, and there was a
merry twinkle in his eye as he turned away again.

"A man is not afraid of one dog, Ixeshane, nor yet of two," he replied.
"But if a hundred set upon him, he must kill them or be killed himself."

Eustace uttered a murmur of assent. Then after a pause he said:

"To travel in a strong party like that in these times is not wise. What
if these Gcalekas were to fall in with a Police patrol--would there not
surely be a fight? That might bring on a war. I am a peaceable man.
Everybody is not. What if they had met a less peaceable man than
myself, and threatened him as they did me? There would have been a
fight and the white man might have been killed--for what can one man do
against twenty?"

"He need not have been killed--only frightened," struck in the other
Kafir, Sikuni.

"Some men