, as the case might be--that man was Godfrey
Glanton, trader in the Zulu. And yet I had lived to learn that I didn't
know him at all.

For instance the happy-go-lucky, free-and-easy, semi-lonely life that
had satisfied me for so many years seemed no longer satisfying; yet why
not, seeing that all its conditions prevailed as before? I had enough
for my needs, and if I didn't make a fortune out of my trade, whether
stationary or from time to time peripatetic, I had always made a steady
profit. Now, however, it came home to me that this was a state of
things hardly the best for a man to live and die in.

Again why not? I had seen contemporaries of my own--men circumstanced
like myself who had come to the same conclusion. They had left it--only
to come to grief in unfamiliar undertakings. Or they had married; only
to find that they had better have elected to go through the rest of life
with a chain and ball hung round their necks, than strapped to some
nagging woman full of affectations and ailments--and raising a brood of
progeny far more likely to prove a curse to them than anything else;
thanks to the holy and gentle maternal influence aforesaid. All this I
had seen, and yet, here I was, feeling restless and unsatisfied because
for several days the recollection of a certain sweet and refined face,
lit up by a pair of large, appealing eyes, had haunted my solitary
hours.

It was that time since I had seen my neighbours. I had heard of them
through my usual sources of information, and they seemed to me to be
getting along all right; wherefore I had forborne to pay another visit
lest it might have the appearance of "hanging around." And by way of
combating an inclination to do so now, I made up my mind to carry out a
deferred intention, viz., pay a visit to Hensley's place.

Tyingoza had been over to see me a couple of times, but made no allusion
whatever to Falkner Sewin's act of boyish idiocy: presumably rating it
at its proper standard. But, I noticed that he wore a new head-ring.
However, I hoped that was an incident forgotten; and as I heard nothing
to the contrary, and my trade ran on as usual, I made no further
reference to it either to Tyingoza or anybody else.

I arrived at the scene of Hensley's disappearance about mid-day. The
homestead stood in a long, narrow valley, thickly bushed. Behind, and
almost overhanging it, was a great krantz whose smooth ironstone wall
glowed like a vast slab of red-h