the house, when he caught
sight of three Kaffirs watching him from beyond one of the ostrich-pens.

"Who are you?" he said to himself. "What do they want?"

He went quickly toward them, but they turned and fled as hard as they
could go, assegai in hand, and the boy stopped and watched them for some
time, thinking very seriously, for he began to divine what it all meant.

"They have heard from Tant that Joe is dying, and I suppose I'm nobody.
They are hanging about to share everything in the place with our two;
but--"

Dyke's _but_ meant a good deal. The position was growing serious, yet
he did not feel dismayed, for, to use his own words, it seemed to stir
him up to show fight.

"And I will, too," he said through his teeth. "I'll let 'em see."

He went back into the house to find Emson sleeping, and apparently
neither he nor the dog had moved.

"Ah, Duke, that's right," said Dyke. "I shall want you. You can keep
watch for me when I go away."

Just then Tanta Sal came in, smiling, to tell him that breakfast was
ready, and he began to question her about when his brother was taken
ill. But either from obtuseness or obstinacy, he could get nothing from
the woman, and he was about to let her go while he ate his breakfast of
mealie cake and hot milk; but a sudden thought occurred to him. Had
those Kaffirs been about there before?

He asked the woman, but in a moment her smile had gone, and she was
staring at him helplessly, apparently quite unable to comprehend the
drift of his questions; so he turned from her in a pet, to hurry through
his breakfast, thinking the while of what he had better do.

He soon decided upon his first step, and that was to try and get Jack
off to Morgenstern's with his letter; and after attending to Emson and
repeating the medicine he had given the previous day, he went out, to
find that the animals had been fed, and that Jack was having his own
breakfast with his wife.

There was a smile for him directly from both, and he plunged into his
business at once; but as he went on, the smiles died out, and all he
said was received in a dull, stolid way. Neither Jack nor his wife
would understand what he meant--their denseness was impenetrable.

"It's of no use to threaten him," said Dyke to himself, as he went back;
"he would only run away and take Tant with him, and then I should be ten
times worse off than I am now. I must go myself. Yes, I could take two
horses, and ride first o