the spectator's face,
colliding with the walls, falling to the ground. It is an ill wind that
blows nobody good. A few starved fowls at the back of the house perk up
into new life as they rush forth to fill their emaciated carcases with
this unlooked-for and abundant dainty. But the watcher withdraws
indoors again, as if to shut out all sight and sound of these new and
fatal intruders, and, as he does so, he is conscious of terrible
shooting pains in his limbs.

Though of Irish parentage on one side, Renshaw Fanning is South African
born. His life, so far--and he is now thirty-five--has been a hard one.
Few, indeed, are the wilder, rougher phases of South African life of
which he has not had more or less experience. He has farmed and has
ridden transport [Carriage of goods by waggon], he has hunted and traded
in the far interior, he has been a treasure-seeker, and has also fought
in the border warfare which now and then breaks out between the
colonists and their savage neighbours. But profitable as some of these
avocations frequently are, somehow or other Renshaw Fanning has never
seemed to make a success of anything, and this is mainly owing to the
extraordinary unselfishness of the man. He will divest himself of his
last shilling to help a friend in need, or even a mere acquaintance--
indeed, he owes the possession of his arid and uninviting desert farm to
this very failing, in that he has been forced to accept it in
satisfaction of a bad debt which would otherwise completely have ruined
him. As a matter of course, his friends and acquaintances vote him a
fool, but deep down in their hearts lies a mine of respect for the only
thoroughly unselfish man they have ever known; and even the unscrupulous
ones who have traded upon and profited by his failing did so with
compunction.

But with all his soft-heartedness and sensitive and retiring
temperament, none who knew him have ever for a moment mistaken Renshaw
Fanning for a muff. No cooler brain exists, no steadier hand or keener
eye in times of danger or dangerous sport--whether at a critical moment,
at the mercy of some treacherously disposed barbarian tribe in the far
interior, or with finger on trigger awaiting the lightning-like charge
of a wounded and infuriated lion. Or on treasure-seeking enterprise,
when physical obstacles combined with failure of water and scarcity of
provisions to render advance or retreat a work of almost superhuman
difficulty, the