t when there is no gallery to play to; in
a word, Trask alone with one was entirely different to Trask showing off
before a crowd, and in fact might have been taken for an ordinarily
decent fellow, before you became alive to a little trick he had of
engaging you in what would seem at the time quite an interesting
conversation or discussion, only to reproduce with variations any idea
you might so have expressed, in order to turn you into ridicule when he
should next get an audience. But I, who had already experienced this
idiosyncrasy, confined conversation with its exploiter to the merest
commonplace, wherefore conversation soon languished. Trask was asleep,
and I was just drowsing off, when a tap at the door and Brian's voice
started me wide awake again.

"What's the row? Anything wrong?" I said.

"Wrong? Yes, very much wrong," was the answer, and striking a match he
proceeded to light my candle.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

PURSUIT.

"The Kafirs have walked off the whole of the _bonte_ span and three
horses," went on Brian.

"Is that all?" I said, intensely relieved.

"That all? Man alive! but those are our best trek oxen. A full span of
sixteen. `That all'!"

"Oh, I don't mean it that way. My first thought was that your father
was worse. You know how seedy he was this evening."

"I see!" was the answer. "No, he's no worse--fast asleep, in fact. I
wouldn't disturb him about this, but--Holt, we must go after them at
once."

"Go after who?" interrupted Trask, sitting up and yawning, for we had
been talking in a low tone and he had not awoke at once. "What's the
row, anyhow?"

Brian repeated what he had just been telling me. "The cheek of the
brutes!" he went on. "Mind, this thing was done in broad daylight. I
suppose they thought that as it was Sunday none of us would be about.
Dumela came upon the fresh spoor as he was out looking after that sick
cow down in the kloof by Aasvogel Krautz. They simply collected them,
and swept off the lot. In broad daylight, too."

"I'm your man, Matterson," said Trask, briskly, having nearly got into
his clothes. "I'll take a hand in this game."

"Thanks. I was going to ask you. George and Kleinbooi are getting up
the horses now. We must start as soon as ever they are here."

"What gees have the niggers taken, Brian?" I asked.

"Why, Beryl's horse, Meerkat, for one, the bay colt, and the third's
uncertain."

Beryl's horse! Here was an additional i