read of rolling plains,
sparsely bushed, and extending for miles and miles. Here and there, at
long intervals, a thread of smoke, rising from homestead or native
kraal, ascended, but for an immensity of distance the expanse lay,
monotonous in its green-brown roll, intersected, in darker line, by the
willow-fringed banks of a nearly dry river-bed. Beyond, in the clear
atmosphere, seeming about twenty miles distant, though fully fifty, rose
mountain piles, flat-topped, in massive walls, or breaking off into
turreted cones. Northward others, more distant still, floating
apparently in mid-air, owing to the mirage-like effect of distance and
clearness, but everywhere a sense of grand, open, unbounded space. The
far-away bark of a dog, or the disturbed crowing of cock koorhaans, came
up out of the stillness. On the side from which they had ascended was
the vast, crater-like hollow, the tangle of rugged and bush-grown
kloofs, and slopes covered with forest trees rising to lap in wave-bound
verdure the grim iron faces of red rock walls and castellated crags. It
was a scene that in the balmy yet exhilarating air of the cloudless day
one could sit there and revel in for ever.

"You can almost see our place from here," said Hazel. "That kopje just
shuts it off, and you wouldn't think it was forty miles as the crow
flies. This is a favourite perch of mine. I often used to climb up
here."

"Did you drag your uncle up, too?"

"Oh yes. He'd ride though. But he doesn't care a rap for scenery.
He'd light his pipe, and in about ten minutes be fast asleep."

"I'll light mine, but I promise you I won't go to sleep."

"No, don't. You must talk to me instead. Tell me some of your
experiences. You must have had so many, and such wonderful ones."

Harley Greenoak laughed deprecatorily. This formula was so frequent
wherever he went that it had become stereotyped. As a rule it annoyed
him; now, however, it was hard to connect such a word with the owner of
that sparkling face, of the wide, lustrous, almost admiring eyes turned
upon his own.

"One can't spin yarns to order," he said. "If something suggests one,
out it comes--or doesn't."

CHAPTER TEN.

DRIFT.

She made no answer, at first. They were in shade now, and she had flung
off her sun-bonnet, and her glance was turned forth upon the wide veldt
lying beneath, while the light breeze stirred the little escaped rings
of her dark hair. No wonder he had found