untenance, whose square, resolute jaw the
short, fair, pointed beard and heavy, sweeping moustache can only half
hide. Though his face and hands are burnt red brown, there is a subtle
something which tells at a glance he is not colonial born, and that,
too, quite apart from the newness of his travelling dress prematurely
worn by rough usage, and of the serviceable valise which is strapped in
front of his saddle.

A stony _kopje_, the only eminence for five miles around, rises before
the traveller. This he has been using as a landmark, and through its
agency steering in a straight line. It, too, having reached, he now
ascends, and immediately there escapes him a pretty forcible ejaculation
of relief. Away in front, breaking the deadly monotony of this horrible
plain, lies a house--a homestead.

It is still three or four miles distant, though apparently nearer. But
the horse has espied it as soon as his rider, and, pricking forward his
ears, he picks up his head and steps out with something of an approach
to briskness.

The first elation--at the certainty of finding necessaries, such as food
and drink--over, the traveller's thoughts turn to considerations of
comfort. After all, the welcome haven is in all probability a mere
rough Boer homestead, the abode of dirt and fleas, a place wherein
comfort is an unknown quantity. And at such a prospect, hungry,
thirsty, thoroughly wearied as he is, his spirits droop.

But his musings are interrupted in a sufficiently startling manner, by
nothing less than the "whiz" of a bullet unpleasantly close to his head,
simultaneously with the "bang" of the piece whence it was discharged.

Looking up, he finds that he has approached within a few hundred yards
of the homestead. In the doorway of the same stands a tall man, clad in
a shirt and trousers, with a gun in his hand, from which he is
extracting the still smoking cartridge shell. Barely has he mastered
these details than another bullet sings past his ear, this time nearer
than the first, while the report rings out upon the evening air.

To say that the wayfarer begins to feel exceedingly uncomfortable is to
express little. Here he is, a perfectly peaceable, unoffending person,
about to seek the much-needed hospitality of yonder domicile, and
suddenly, and without an iota of provocation, its owner proceeds to make
a target of him in the most cold-blooded fashion. True, he has heard
that many of the up-country Boers are