t half a mile distant, the red
ochre on their clothing and persons showing in vivid and pleasing
contrast against the green of the hillside, moved ten or a dozen
Kafirs--men, women, and children. They stepped out in line at a brisk,
elastic pace, and the lazy hum of their conversation drifted to the ears
of the two white men so plainly that they could almost catch its burden.

To the younger of these two men the splendid vastness of this
magnificent panorama, framing the picturesque figures of its barbarous
inhabitants, made up a scene of which he never wearied, for though at
present a Kaffrarian stock farmer, he had the mind of a thinker, a
philosopher, and a poet. To the elder, however, there was nothing
noteworthy or attractive about it. We fear he regarded the beautiful
rolling plains as so much better or worse _veldt_ for purposes of
stock-feeding, and was apt to resent the continued and unbroken blue of
the glorious vault above as likely to lead to an inconvenient scarcity
of rain, if not to a positive drought. As for the dozen Kafirs in the
foreground, so far from discerning anything poetical or picturesque
about them, he looked upon them as just that number of black scoundrels
making their way to the nearest canteen to get drunk on the proceeds of
the barter of skins flayed from stolen sheep--his own sheep among those
of others.

As if to emphasise this last idea, cresting the ridge at that moment,
they came in sight of a large, straggling flock. Straggling indeed! In
twos and threes, in clumps of a dozen, and in clumps of fifty, the
animals, though numbering but eleven hundred, were spread over nearly
two miles of _veldt_. It was the flock in charge of the defaulting and
contumacious Goniwe, who, however, having caught a glimpse of the
approach of his two masters, might be descried hurriedly collecting his
scattered charges. Carhayes ground his teeth.

"I'll rip his black hide off him. I'll teach him to let the sheep go to
the devil while he hunts our bucks." And gripping his reins he drove
his spurs into his horse's flanks, with fell intent toward the offending
Kafir.

"Wait--wait!" urged the more prudent Eustace. "For Heaven's sake, don't
give yourself away again. If you must lick the boy, wait until you get
him--and the sheep--safe home this evening. If you give him beans now,
its more than likely he'll leave the whole flock in the _veldt_ and
won't come back at all--not forgetting, of cours