ing. On the whole, I like them."

Carhayes made no reply, unless an inarticulate growl could be construed
as such, and the two men rode on in silence. They were distant cousins,
these two, and as regarded their farming operations, partners. Yet
never were two men more utterly dissimilar. Carhayes, the older by a
matter of ten years, was just on the wrong side of forty--but his
powerfully built frame was as tough and vigorous as in the most
energetic days of his youth. He was rather a good looking man, but the
firm set of his lips beneath the thick, fair beard, and a certain
shortness of the neck, set forth his choleric disposition at first
glance. The other was slightly the taller of the two, and while lacking
the broad, massive proportions of his cousin, was straight, and well set
up. But Eustace Milne's face would have puzzled the keenest character
reader. It was a blank. Not that there was aught of stupidity or
woodenness stamped thereon. On the contrary, there were moments when it
would light up with a rare attractiveness, but its normal expression was
of that impassibility which you may see upon the countenance of a priest
or a lawyer of intellect and wide experience, whose vocation involves an
intimate and profoundly varied acquaintance with human nature in all its
chequered lights and shades; rarely, however, upon that of one so young.

From the high ridge on which the two men were riding, the eye could
wander at will over the rolling, grassy plains and mimosa-dotted dales
of Kaffraria. The pure azure of the heavens was unflecked by a single
cloud. The light, balmy air of this early spring day was as
invigorating as wine. Far away to the southeast the sweep of undulating
grass land melted into an indistinct blue haze--the Indian Ocean--while
in the opposite direction the panorama was barred by the hump-like
Kabousie Heights, their green slopes alternating with lines of dark
forest in a straggling labyrinth of intersecting kloofs. Far away over
the golden, sunlit plains, the white walls of a farmhouse or two were
discernible, and here and there, rising in a line upon the still
atmosphere, a column of grey smoke marked the locality of many a distant
kraal lying along the spurs of the hills. So still, so transparent,
indeed, was the air that even the voices of their savage inhabitants and
the low of cattle floated faintly across the wide and intervening space.
Beneath--against the opposite ridge, abou