ange. I'm quite jolly here, but still, a
change bucks one up a bit."

Her father smiled to himself. That letter had given him an idea which
tickled him, for he had a very comical side.

"But what's on?" she said. "Are we clearing out? Has it become time
to?"

"No, no. There's no row on--as yet. That'll come, sooner or later, all
in good time. Only business."

"Oh! What kind?"

Verna was so completely in her father's confidence in every department
of the same that there was no inquisitiveness underlying the query.
There was a joke in the background of this, however, which he was not
going to let her into. It would keep.

"What kind?" he repeated. "Oh, general. I say, though, Meyrick and
Francis are nice chaps, aren't they? but, good Lord! their faces would
have been a study if they could have seen through that heap of waggon
sail in the yard that was staring them in the eye through the window all
the time they were scoffing the other bit of the owner of that head,
which was browsing away in Lumisana this time yesterday. Eh? Beef!
Roast beef of Old England! That was killingly funny. What?"

"Yes, it was," rejoined Verna, who was gazing after the receding figures
of the police, growing smaller and smaller on the plain below. "Still,
the mistake was excusable. There's not much difference between either.
When are we going to Ezulwini, dear?"

"H'm. In a day or two."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note 1. A snake of the _mamba_ species, which grows to a considerable
size, very scarce, and with a proportionately bad reputation.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

THE CHIEF.

Sapazani's principal kraal was situated in a bushy hollow, shut in on
three sides by a crescent of cliff and rock abounding in clefts and
caves. It contained something like a hundred dome-shaped huts standing
between their symmetrical ring fences, and the space immediately
surrounding it was open, save for a small clump of the flat-topped
thorn-tree, Sapazani, as we have shown, was ultra-conservative, and the
slovenly and slipshod up-to-date formation of a kraal--or rather lack of
formation, with huts dumped down anyhow--did not obtain among his clan.
They kept to the old-fashioned double-ringed fence.

Now this very conservatism on the part of Sapazani rendered him an
object of suspicion and distrust among the authorities administering the
country, for it pointed to "aims." The other chie