en me."

The words--quick, sharp, replete with alarm--were Fleetwood's. Wyvern,
who was just in front of him, stopped dead in his tracks and turned, as
with a mighty crash a nearly-cut through tree-trunk came to earth hardly
more than a yard in front of him. His next step would have been his
last.

"Blazes!" cried Bully Rawson, "but I never thought that log would have
come down at all. I was just shoving against it to see how much more
cutting through it wanted. What's that about a snake, Joe?"

"No. It isn't one," said that worthy, in a tranquil tone of voice as he
looked down. "It's only a thorn dug into my ankle. I was bitten once,
and I suppose it's made me nervous ever since. Which is lucky, or you'd
have been squashed to pulp, Wyvern."

"By the Lord he would," cried Rawson. "Man alive, but you've had a
narrow squeak! Well I'm blasted sorry if I've given you a shaking up--
and I can't say more."

"Oh, that'll be all right," said Wyvern, forgetting his own narrow
escape in his intense relief. "But look here, Joe. Are you dead sure
it wasn't one?"

"Dead cert. Look. Here's the thorn," picking one up.

"Haw-haw-haw!" bellowed Rawson. "Well, Wyvern, I suppose you and I are
the only two cusses in the world who can say they've ever seen Joe
Fleetwood in a funk. You were in one, weren't you, Joe?"

"Rather," was the answer, drily given.

"Well, I am a clumsy fellow," said Rawson, in his breezy way. "Come
along now, and I'll show you my _amabele_ and mealie lands."

He led the way by a narrow game path in the bush and soon they came to a
high hedge made of mimosa thorn boughs tightly interlaced. Beyond this
some three acres of green crops were visible.

"That's to keep out the bucks," said Rawson over his shoulder, for he
was leading. "They'd scoff the lot in a night or two if there wasn't
something of the kind. Fond of hunting, Wyvern?"

"Yes."

"Well, if you come up here on a moonlight night you'll get plenty of
chances. There's an odd koodoo or so comes sniffing around after that
stuff, but the thorn fence humbugs them."

Wyvern was just thinking how even that inducement would not persuade him
to see a moment more of his host than necessity obliged, so intense was
the aversion the latter had inspired in him, when a sudden and violent
push from behind, almost of the nature of a blow, sent him staggering
and then sprawling, cannoning against and nearly upsetting his said
host, who wa