omething is
home-like when I'm there.'

Life was growing brighter to him. His fever-fancy had opened his
eyes a little to the charm of the new country it was, at least,
here and there, not unlike the old country.

'I think I shall fancy this place more now,' he said to John on
the morning they parted. 'But, oh, if you could only have seen
that little place of mine five miles from Sevenoaks!'

'Look here!' said John. 'You've got a bigger estate here than
ever you had there, and you can find the same sort of interests
in it. Study your Kaffir tenants, and help them with ideas about
stock and ploughing and church and school. Your neighbors don't.
Well, more simpletons and arrant wasters, they! Believe me,
you'll find the new life much more like the old life in Kent, if
you do. Then study tree-planting, and look after this grand old
native timber. Expect me next month, on the 23rd.'

He went away and left Benson lonely. But the real blackness of
his loneliness was gone. The planning of the new homestead would
keep him busy for a long while now. Was not healing virtue
exuding from that soil, which the happy dreams of his recovery
had consecrated? His fever had given him a new point of view, or
rather given him back his old Kentish point of view delight in
God's own country sights and scenes, care for his tenants, and
hope.

LE ROI EST MORT

The railway had almost crept up to Alexandra Then--the seventy-three
miles of its sandy pilgrimage were all but complete. In three
months or so it would be open to those who could afford their
penny a mile no, but I am forgetting, on the privileged group
to which it belongs no European may travel third-class.

I did not welcome that railway with any warmth. The district
that it tapped had seemed to me a camping-ground of refuge, as
civilization pressed on. That district was a haven for the
Kaffir-trader, a haven for the transport-rider, a haven too for
the foot-slogging missionary, like myself. We have our faults,
all three doubtless, and deserve the spurning of civilization's
iron feet, when our time comes, doubtless. On the other hand our
displacement is a matter for some sympathy, it is likely to hurt
like other displacements. Also we are prone to note that the
admirable iron feet of our displacer are not unmixed with baser
clay.

I came to Shumba Siding last Eastertide, on my way to Alexandra.
Charles Miller was there in charge of the line, and he offered me
a th