edient remained. The pony, had a long
and bushy tail. He doubled the end of this, and securely fastened the
rein to it. Then he hastened to his camp for the purpose of fetching a
spade and calling people to assist him.

On returning a strange spectacle met his view. The pony was sitting on
the ground, erect, after the manner of a biped. Its head was in the
air, its hind-legs were extended horizontally, its fore-legs were
waving impotently up and down'. The ant-bear had carved its way deep
into the bowels of the earth, gradually but relentlessly dragging the
hapless pony down until its posterior parts hermetically sealed up the
burrow. It was, in fact, only the smallness of the latter which
prevented the animal from being completely buried. Eventually, however,
the rein snapped, and the pony was thus released from a durance
probably unique in equine experience. But I wish to make it quite clear
that I guarantee nothing in connection with the foregoing remarkable
tale, except that I have related it as it was told to me.

I often picture the rounded sandhills stretching from the Gonubie Mouth
to the Nahoon, with the dark, olive-green boskage that clothed their
curves with beauty, and the veil of orange tinted mystery that at dawn
hung like a curtain across that region where sea and sky awaited,
breathless, the advent of day. I suppose the placid lagoons still
mirror the drifting pageants of cloudland, while the purple kingfishers
flit from rock to rock, or poise, fluttering in the air, before they,
plunge into the crystal water.

I imagine that at windless nightfall the rich, throbbing organ-tones of
the Indian Ocean surf toll all the darkling glades. I wonder do the
green, flame-winged loories today call hoarsely through the aisles of
greenery, and the bushbucks bark their angry challenges from the deep
and tangled hollows. I wonder do the monkeys, when the forenoon waxes
sultry, swing chattering from bough to bough down the hillside, seeking
their daily drink in the coolest depths of the kloof, and do the great
Nymphalis butterflies, with wings of ochre and pearl, flit among the
tree tops!

But so much I know that a part of my youth which in some strange way
seems to have acquired an individuality, of its own dwells, and will
for ever dwell, among these scenes. And I shall never be so ill-advised
as to seek it, for the wraith, like a mocking dryad, would flit from
tree to tree, as beautiful and as elusive as the rain