me music played he ran
round the room with her, twisting round and round like a wounded pouw."

"That, I have heard, the folks do in the towns. The Hottentots, too,
are fond of it, though they don't run about in the same manner. But
what do the men during the day? Is there much game about there?"

"This, Victor, is the strangest thing of all. The men pass all their
lives in the stores or in the shops, or they just walk about the town,
or go in parties to ride out and ride home again. There is no game at
all there, or so little that no one goes after it.

"Then, Hans, I will tell you what it is. The Mensch have no means of
proving themselves men by riding and shooting, or training their oxen
and horses, or even spooring, as we have here. We can make a mark on a
man, and we know him by his deeds. We know you, Hans; you are a safe
man to stand near one when a wounded lion is preparing to make his
spring. You can be trusted to stop an elephant in his charge, and you
can tell at a glance a buffalo's spoor from an ox's. In the towns they
can't do this, and so they amuse themselves with these trifles. And do
they not try to exceed each other in their clothes, Hans?"

"Yes, they do; and by this means they show how much money they have."

"You are not sorry to come back to the country again, Hans?"

"No, Victor, I am not. The town men, I knew, laughed at me because my
clothes were not like theirs. I should like to see some of these
spoc-karls [The Boers are fond of terming a man whom they consider a
dandy a spoc-karl.] on wilde paard, hunting an angry bull elephant. I
think we should laugh then."

"Yes, Hans; and they laughed at you because you were not clever at what
is not a manly business, and we should laugh at them because they could
not do what it requires a man with a head, heart, and hand to succeed
in. I don't think we shall ever want to live in a town."

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.

HANS TIRES OF THE TOWNS--REACHES THE WILDERNESS--ADVENTURES WITH WILD
BEASTS--MEETS HIS OLD COMPANIONS, AND STARTS FOR HIS OLD HAUNTS.

To a man with the habits and training of Hans Sterk, the journey from
the eastern frontier to the locality north-west of Natal Bay, in which
his friends were residing, was merely a pleasant trip. He had to pass
over many hundred miles of wild country, in which were savage men and
beasts, the former of which would not hesitate, should the opportunity
occur, to slay a solitary travelle