e latter, who, although his
acquaintance with colonial Dutch is extremely limited, has no difficulty
in grasping the old fellow's meaning. "Stones, locusts, Valley of the
Eye! Pho! The sooner we get him to bed the better. I say, Old man,"
he breaks off persuasively, laying a hand on the shoulder of his
unconscious host, "you're not quite the thing, you know. Come along and
turn in. I'll give you a hand at getting your togs off."

The other looks at him vacantly, and seems to comprehend. He suffers
himself to be led into the inner room quite docilely, and there and then
to be assisted into bed. Once there, however, the blood rushes to his
face, and he begins raving horribly, though his violence finds
expression in speech rather than in action.

The stranger sits at his bedside carefully watching him.

"Not mad--only fever," he remarks to himself at the close of one of
these paroxysms. "Bush fever, I suppose, and plenty of it. He's got a
pulse like a steam hammer, by Jove!"

He has. Not for nothing has that unwonted giddiness, those shooting
pains in the limbs, attacked him a few hours earlier. By nightfall
Renshaw Fanning is in a burning fever, raving in the throes of delirium.

CHAPTER THREE.

RENSHAW FANNING'S SECRET.

The stranger's wants had been attended to by the old Koranna woman
already described; which may be taken to mean that he had found time to
snatch a hurried meal during one of the sick man's quiet intervals.
Then he had returned to his post.

His inhospitable, not to say dangerous, reception stood now accounted
for, and with a vivid recollection of the same he took an early
opportunity of carefully hiding all the firearms he could lay hands on.
Old Dirk and his wife kept coming in on tiptoe to see how their master
was getting on, and, in fact, betrayed an amount of concern for his
well-being hardly to be looked for in the scions of a wild and degraded
race. But Renshaw Fanning was a man to command attachment, from
untutored and degraded savages no less than from a dog.

The night wore on, and these humble and faithful retainers, seeing that
their master was in better hands than theirs, had retired to roost. The
stranger, having dragged a capacious armchair into the bedroom, sat and
watched. Who could this man be, he wondered, dwelling alone in this
desert place, stricken with mortal sickness, and no one to tend him save
a couple of miserable specimens of a miserable race, were