she added hastily,
"and no doubt you will be a great hunter one day, Allan Quatermain,
since you can already aim so well."

"I hope so," I answered, blushing at the compliment, "for I love
hunting, and when there are so many wild things it does not matter if we
kill a few. I shot these for you and your father to eat."

"Come, then, and give them to him. He will thank you," and she led the
way through the gate in the sandstone wall into the yard, where the
outbuildings stood in which the riding horses and the best of the
breeding cattle were kept at night, and so past the end of the long,
one-storied house, that was stone-built and whitewashed, to the stoep or
veranda in front of it.

On the broad stoep, which commanded a pleasant view over rolling,
park-like country, where mimosa and other trees grew in clumps, two men
were seated, drinking strong coffee, although it was not yet ten o'clock
in the morning.

Hearing the sound of the horses, one of these, Mynheer Marais, whom I
already knew, rose from his hide-strung chair. He was, as I think I
have said, not in the least like one of the phlegmatic Boers, either in
person or in temperament, but, rather, a typical Frenchman, although no
member of his race had set foot in France for a hundred and fifty years.
At least so I discovered afterwards, for, of course, in those days I
knew nothing of Frenchmen.

His companion was also French, Leblanc by name, but of a very different
stamp. In person he was short and stout. His large head was bald except
for a fringe of curling, iron-grey hair which grew round it just above
the ears and fell upon his shoulders, giving him the appearance of a
tonsured but dishevelled priest. His eyes were blue and watery, his
mouth was rather weak, and his cheeks were pale, full and flabby. When
the Heer Marais rose, I, being an observant youth, noted that Monsieur
Leblanc took the opportunity to stretch out a rather shaky hand and fill
up his coffee cup out of a black bottle, which from the smell I judged
to contain peach brandy.

In fact, it may as well be said at once that the poor man was a
drunkard, which explains how he, with all his high education and great
ability, came to hold the humble post of tutor on a remote Boer farm.
Years before, when under the influence of drink, he had committed some
crime in France--I don't know what it was, and never inquired--and fled
to the Cape to avoid prosecution. Here he obtained a professorship at