d without seeing us. Now as he reined in and
approached us we saw that the boy's face was as white as death, and his
eyes staring with the most awful look of horror and fear.

"Man, what's wrong?" said Brian sharply, his own bronzed countenance
turning a kind of whitey-brown. "Not shot yourself, have you?"

"No, not myself--not myself," the boy managed to jerk out. And then he
broke into a wild fit of sobbing.

Brian's face grew still whiter.

"Is it somebody else, then? But you went out alone."

"Yes--I--I--I w-went out alone."

"George, pull yourself together, man. Whatever's happened; we're losing
time. Don't be an ass now. Tell us all about it."

This he managed to do; and a woeful and dismaying tale it was that he
spasmodically unfolded. Reft of its incoherencies--natural under the
circumstances--this was the sum of it.

He had reached the Zwaart Kloof, and having left his horse was
stealthily advancing to peer over the brink of a small krantz, beneath
which a bush-buck was sometimes lying. This time, instead of a
bush-buck there were a lot of Kafir boys larking about the kloof. He
told them to clear out, but, seeing he couldn't get at them immediately,
they were cheeky and laughed at him. So he pointed his gun at them,
calling out that he'd shoot the whole lot if they didn't clear--
intending, of course, only to frighten them--and then--how it happened
he could not for the life of him tell--but the gun went off, the heavy
charge of treble A simply raking the group. Two were killed outright,
for they never moved, and two more lay wounded and screaming. The rest
ran away, and he himself, reckoning that the best plan was to get help
as soon as possible, had started for home as fast as his horse could
carry him.

Such was the miserable story which the wretched boy managed to unfold,
and meanwhile we were walking rapidly towards the house.

"Oh, I never meant to do anything but scare them, Brian--I swear before
God I didn't!" sobbed the poor little chap, in an agony of remorse.

"Of course you didn't, George. We all know that. Here, give me the
gun."

"Take it--take it. I never want to touch a gun again in my life. Oh,
what is to be done? What will the dad say?"

Septimus Matterson did not "say" much, but the expression of his face
was as that of a man undergoing acute physical pain. Meanwhile Brian
had been thinking out a plan, which was to proceed at once to the spot
with two of the