likely to be going up there?"

"We are, a little later," replied Mrs Bateman. "This is fortunate.
You will be able to tell us all about it."

"With pleasure. I shall be too happy to give you any information I
can."

"Is it safe up there?" said Nidia. "Is there no fear of those dreadful
savages rising some night and killing us all?"

Unconsciously the official reserve came over John Ames. He had more
than once predicted to himself and one or two confidential friends such
a contingency as by no means outside the bounds of practical politics,
almost invariably to be laughed at for his pains. Now he replied:

"Everything that precaution can do is against it. They are carefully
supervised; in fact, it is my own particular business to supervise a
considerable section of them."

"Really? But how do you talk, to them? Can they talk English?"

John Ames smiled. "You forget I mentioned that I was raised in Natal."

"Of course. How stupid I am!" declared Nidia. "And so you know their
language and have to look after them? Isn't it very exciting?"

"No; deplorably prosaic. There are points of interest about the work,
though."

"And you keep them in order, and know all that's going on?"

"We try to; and I think on the whole we succeed fairly well."

But at that very moment Shiminya the sorcerer was dooming to death two
persons, and filling with seditious venom the minds of three chiefs of
importance within the speaker's district.

CHAPTER SIX.

ABOUT SOME DALLYING.

John Ames was beginning to enjoy his leave, and that actively.

At first he had done so in a negative kind of way. It was pleasant to
have nothing to do, and plenty of time to do it in, to rise in the
morning and know that until bedtime at night he had only to please
himself and take no thought for anything whatever. He had a few
acquaintance in the neighbourhood, more or less busy people whose
avocations kept them in Cape Town throughout the working day, and so was
mostly thrown upon his own resources. This, however, was not without
its advantages, for the change had hardly benefited him much as yet, and
he was conscious of a sort of mental languor which rendered him rather
disinclined than otherwise for the society of his fellows. He liked to
mount his bicycle and spin for miles along the smooth level roads,
beneath the oak and fir shade, the towering wall of mountain glimpsed
ever and anon athwart the trees; or, gaining the neare