ove right over that Britisher
last month, and he missed it clean with both barrels. That young fellow
stopping with Earle."

"Who's he? A jackaroo?"

"No. A visitor. I don't know who he is. By the way, I must take you
over to Earle's one of these days. He's got a good bit of shoot. Look
here, Jafta," turning to a yellow-skinned Hottentot, also mounted, who
had just arrived on the scene, "Baas Blachland has shot our biggest
bushbuck ram at last."

"Ja. That is true, Baas," grinned the fellow, who was Bayfield's
after-rider, inspecting the edge of his knife preparatory to the
necessary disembowelling and loading up of the quarry.

"We may as well be getting along," said Bayfield. "Jafta, go and fetch
Baas Blachland's horse."

"I thought an up-country man like you would turn up his nose at our
hunting, Blachland," said Bayfield as they rode along. "But what you
can't turn up your nose at is our air--eh? Why, you're looking twice
the man you were a fortnight ago even. I suppose that infernal fever's
not easily shaken off."

"It's the very devil to shake off, but if anything will do it, this
will." And the speaker glanced around with a feeling of complete and
restful enjoyment.

The kloof they were threading afforded in itself a noble and romantic
scene. Great krantzes soaring up to the unclouded blue, walls of red
ironstone gleaming like bronze in the sun-rays--or, in tier upon tier,
peeping forth from festoons of creeper and anchored tree and spiky aloe.
Yonder a sweep of spur on the one hand, like a combing wave of tossing
tumbling foliage, on the other a mighty cliff, forming a portal beyond
which was glimpsed a round, rolling summit, high above in the distance--
but everywhere foliage, its many shades of green relieved here and there
by the scarlet and pink of the wild geranium, the light blue of the
plumbago, and half a dozen other splashes of colour, bright and
harmonising; aglow, too, with the glancing of brilliant-winged birds,
tuneful with their melodious piping and the murmuring hum of bees. And
the air--strong, clear, exhilarating, such as never could be mistaken
for the enervating steaminess of up-country heat--for the place was at a
good elevation, and in one of the settled parts of the Cape Colony.

Gazing around upon all this, Hilary Blachland seemed to be drinking in
new draughts of life. The bout of fever, in the throes of which we last
saw him lying, helpless and alone, had proved