than he chose, when it came to running. He sprang down
into the road again, quickly shovelled up a double handful of stones,
and loped on. Then he turned, just as the pursuers came within easy
range, and opened fire again. It was too much. With dire threats they
beat a retreat. They would get hold of him again sooner or later, they
declared, and that time he would not get off at any price. At all of
which the Zulu boy chuckled and laughed, hurling abusive epithets at
them in his quaint English.

The while poor Smithson, in the grasp of the big fellow who custodied
him, was having a bad time, in the shape of a slight forestalment of
what he might expect when the others returned. But for him, too, came
relief--rescue, and it came in the shape of a couple of prefects who
appeared in sight, sauntering along the field-path towards them.

"You'd better let me go," he said, "or I'll call out to Street and
Cluer."

The other saw the force of this, and, with a threat and a sly cuff,
acted upon it, and slunk away to give the alarm to the rest. Half an
hour later Smithson and Anthony were forgathering under a hedge, talking
over their escape.

"Well, you are no end of a brick, Cetchy," said the former. "Why,
they'll make you cock chief of your tribe one of these days, I should
think."

"Ha--ha--ha!" chuckled the other. "Jarnley hurt more'n we hurt. All of
'em hurt. Ha--ha--ha!"

"Well, you got me out of it with those beasts. I say, Cetchy, old chap,
I'm expecting a hamper next week, and won't we have a blow out then!" he
added, in a burst of gratitude and admiration.

"Hamper? What's that?"

"Why, a basket of tuck. Grub, you know, from home. No end of good
things."

"Ha! All right," said the other with a jolly laugh.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

That day Haviland was making the most of his time and his solitary
ramble. His collecting boxes were fairly well filled; among other
specimens he had hit upon a grasshopper warbler's nest, whose existence
he suspected, containing five eggs, beautifully fresh and thus easily
blown, likewise a sedge-warbler's, hung cuplike, among the bulrushes of
a reedy pond. The spoils of two wheatears, extracted with some
difficulty from a deep burrow on the slope of Sidbury Down, had also
fallen to his lot, and now, stretched on the springy turf on the summit
of that eminence, he was enjoying a well-earned rest, thoroughly
c