y were
making a dreadful noise last night over in the kopjes. They seemed to
have got in among a troop of baboons, and between the lions and the
baboons the row was something appalling."

"Quite sure they were lions?"

"Of course they were. Weren't they, Justin?"

"No sort of mistake about that," was the brisk reply.

"Well, I think they were lions too," went on Blachland, "because the one
I shot this morning might easily have been coming from this direction."

"What?" cried Spence. "D'you mean to say you shot a lion this morning?"

"Yes. Just about daylight. And a fine big chap too."

"And you never told us anything about it all this time!"

Blachland smiled. "Well, you see, Spence, it isn't my first, not by
several. Or possibly I might have ridden up at a hard gallop,
flourishing my hat and hooraying," he said good-naturedly.

But there was a grimness about the very good nature, decided Spence.
Here was a man who had just shot a lion, and seem to think no more of
the feat than if he had merely shot a partridge. He was conscious that
he himself, under the same circumstances would have acted somewhat after
the manner the other had described.

"But how did you come upon him?" asked Hermia, eagerly.

"Just after daylight. Started to ride on ahead of the waggon. Came to
a dry drift; horse stuck short, refused to go down. Snake, I thought at
first; but no. On the opposite side a big lion staring straight at us,
not seventy yards away. Slipped from the gee, drew a careful bead, and
let go. Laid him out without a kick, bang through the skull. Quite
close to the waggon it was too. I left them taking off the skin.
There! that's the waggon"--as the distant crack of a whip came through
the clear morning air. "We'll go and look at it directly."

"Oh, well done!" cried Hermia; and the wholly approving glance she
turned upon the lion-slayer sent a pang of soreness and jealousy through
Justin Spence. He began to hate Blachland. That infernal assumption of
indifference was really affectation--in short, the most objectionable
form of "side."

Soon, the rumble of heavy wheels drew nearer, and, to the accompaniment
of much whip-cracking, and unearthly and discordant yells, without which
it seems impossible to drive a span of oxen, the waggon rolled up. It
was drawn within the enclosure to be out-spanned.

"You have got a small load this time," said Hermia, surveying the great,
cumbrous, weather-worn ve