RVELD AGAIN, AND ONE OR TWO SURPRISING INCIDENTS.

Seated one evening at the door of their dug-out hut or cavern on the
banks of the river, the three brothers Skyd discussed the affairs of the
colony and smoked their pipes.

"Never knew such a country," said John Skyd, "never!"

"Abominable!" observed James.

"Detestable!" remarked Robert.

"Why don't you Skyd-addle then?" cried Frank Dobson. "If I thought it
as bad as you do, I'd leave it at once. But you are unjust."

"Unjust!" echoed John Skyd; "that were impossible. What could be worse?
Here have we been for three years, digging and ploughing, raking and
hoeing, carting and milking, churning and--and--and what the better are
we now? Barely able to keep body and soul together, with the rust
ruining our wheat, and an occasional Kafir raid depriving us of our
cattle, while we live in a hole on the river's bank like rabbits; with
this disadvantage over these facetious creatures, that we have more
numerous wants and fewer supplies."

"That's so," said Bob; "if we could only content ourselves with a few
bulbous roots and grass all would be well, but, Frank, we sometimes want
a little tea and sugar; occasionally we run short of tobacco; now and
then we long for literature; coffee sometimes recurs to memory; at rare
intervals, especially when domestic affairs go wrong, the thought of
woman, as of a long-forgotten being of angelic mould, _will_ come over
us. Ah! Frank, it is all very well for you to smile, you who have been
away enjoying yourself for months past hunting elephants and other small
game in the interior, but you have no notion how severely our failures
are telling on our spirits. Why, Jim there tried to make a joke the
other day, and it was so bad that Jack immediately went to bed with a
sick-headache."

"True," said Jack solemnly, "quite true, and I couldn't cure that
headache for a whole day, though I took a good deal of Cape-smoke before
it came on, as well as afterwards."

"But, my dear chums," remonstrated Dobson, "is it not--"

"Now don't ask, `Is it not your own fault?' with that wiseacre look of
yours," said John Skyd, testily tapping the bowl of his pipe on a stone
preparatory to refilling it. "We are quite aware that we are not
faultless; that we once or twice have planted things upside down, or a
yard too deep, besides other little eccentricities of ignorance; but
such errors are things of the past, and though we now drive our drill