; and upon every hand were to be seen and heard
pleasant faces, cheery voices, and the hearty greetings of friends long
severed by time and distance.

On the evening of the 23rd December, a young man sat in his pleasant
bedroom in the _annexe_ of the International Hotel, which lies rather
out of the heat of the town on the lower slopes of Table Mountain. It
was an hour before dinner, and the young man sat in his shirt-sleeves
before the open window, idly smoking a pipe, and feasting his eyes on
the glorious view that lay before him.

Jack Compton had just come down from two years' travel and sport in the
far interior; you might tell that by his lean, sun-tanned face and
deeply embrowned arms, and by the collection of curios--bird-skins,
photographs, horns, heads, assegais, and other articles that littered
the room--and, after a rough time of it, was now enjoying to the full
the ease and relaxation of life at the Cape. It was a noble prospect
that lay spread before him--none nobler in the world. Cape Town, with
its white houses and dark-green foliage, contrasted strongly in the near
foreground with the peerless blue and the sweeping contours of Table
Bay. Out at the entrance to the bay, Robben Island swam dimly into the
far Atlantic. Across the bay, the eye was first smitten by the blinding
dazzle of the beach of white sand below Blaauwberg. Then rose chain
upon chain of glorious mountain scenery, the jagged sierras of
Stellenbosch and the far line of Hottentots Holland melting in blues and
purples upon the horizon. Under the setting sun the crests of these
distant sierras were rapidly becoming rose-tinted, and the warm browns
and purples glorified a thousandfold. Never, thought Jack Compton, as
he pulled contentedly at his pipe, had he beheld a more enchanting
scene.

At that instant his door was flung open, and a tall, sunburnt, keen-eyed
man of thirty entered the room.

"Hallo, Jack, you old buffer!" he exclaimed, "what are you up to,
sitting here brooding like a pelican at a salt pan? I've been looking
for you. I've been chatting for the last two hours with a most
interesting Johnnie just come round from Walfisch Bay. He's been
trading and hunting in a new veldt far inland to the north-east, and
he's had some extraordinary times. The country he's been in is,
seemingly, quite unknown to Europeans; the game's as thick as sheep in a
fold; and he's had the most wonderful shooting. But there's one
advent