un. His turn, however, had come after Barrington's disappearance, and
he was now able to contemplate an expedition into Manicaland without
reckoning up his pass-book.

He bought a buck-wagon with a tent covering over the hinder part,
provisions sufficient for six months, a span of oxen, a couple of
horses salted for the thickhead sickness, hired a Griqua lad as
wagon-driver, and half a dozen Matabele boys who were waiting for a
chance to return, and started northeastward.

From Johannesburg he travelled to Makoni's town, near the Zimbabwe
ruins, and with half a dozen brass rings and an empty cartridge case
hired a Ma-ongwi boy, who had been up to the Mashonaland plateau
before. The lad guided him to the head waters of the Inyazuri, and
there Norris fenced in his camp, in a grass country fairly wooded, and
studded with gigantic blocks of granite.

The Ma-ongwi boy chose the site, fifty yards west of an ant-heap, and
about a quarter of a mile from a forest of machabel. He had camped on
the spot before, he said.

"When?" asked Norris.

"Twice," replied the boy. "Three years ago and last year."

"Last year?" Norris looked up with a start of surprise. "You were up
here last year?"

"Yes!"

For a moment or two Norris puffed at his pipe, then he asked slowly--

"Who with?"

"Mr. Barrington," the boy told him, and added, "It is his wagon-track
which we have been following."

Norris rose from the ground, and walked straight ahead for the
distance of a hundred yards until he reached a jasmine bush, which
stood in a bee-line with the opening of his camp fence. Thence he
moved round in a semicircle until he came upon a wagon-track in the
rear of the camp, and, after pausing there, he went forward again, and
completed the circle. He returned to his wagon chuckling. Barrington,
he remembered, had been lost while travelling northwards to the
Zambesie; but the track stopped here. There was not a trace of it to
the north or the east or the west. It was evident that the boy had
chosen Barrington's last camping-ground as the site for his own, and
he discovered a comforting irony in the fact. He felt that he was
standing in Barrington's shoes.

That night, as he was smoking by the fire, he called out to the
Ma-ongwi boy. The lad came forward from his hut behind the wagon.

"Tell me how you lost him," said Norris.

"He rode that way alone after a sable antelope." The boy pointed an
arm to the southwest. "The beast was wou