mystic breath of the Simiacine grove did not appear to
affect him as it did his companions. This was probably accounted for
by the fact that, being chief of the hunters, most of his days had been
passed on the lower slopes in search of game.

To him came presently Jack Meredith--the same gentle-mannered man, with
an incongruously brown face and quick eyes seeing all. It is not, after
all, the life that makes the man. There are gentle backwoodsmen, and
ruffians among those who live in drawing-rooms.

"Well?" said Meredith, following the glance of his friend's eye as he
surveyed his men.

Oscard took his pipe from his lips and looked gravely at him.

"Don't half like it, you know," he said in a low voice; for Durnovo was
talking with a head porter a few yards away.

"Don't half like what?--the flavour of that pipe? It looks a little
strong."

"No, leaving you here," replied Oscard.

"Oh, that's all right, old chap! You can't take me with you, you know.
I intended to stick to it when I came away from home, and I am not going
to turn back now."

Oscard gave a queer little upward jerk of the head, as if he had just
collected further evidence in support of a theory which chronically
surprised him. Then he turned away and looked down over the vast
untrodden tract of Africa that lay beneath them. He kept his eyes fixed
there, after the manner of a man who has no fluency in personal comment.

"You know," he said jerkily, "I didn't think--I mean you're not the sort
of chap I took you for. When I first saw you I thought you were a bit of
a dandy and--all that. Not the sort of man for this work. I thought that
the thing was bound to be a failure. I knew Durnovo, and had no faith
in him. You've got a gentle way about you, and your clothes are so
confoundedly neat. But--" Here he paused and pulled down the folds of
his Norfolk jacket. "But I liked the way you shot that leopard the day
we first met."

"Beastly fluke," put in Meredith, with his pleasant laugh.

Oscard contented himself with a denying shake of the head.

"Of course," he continued, with obvious determination to get it all
off his mind, "I know as well as you do that you are the chief of this
concern--have been chief since we left Msala--and I never want to work
under a better man."

He put his pipe back between his lips and turned round with a contented
smile, as much as to say, "There, that is the sort of man I am! When I
want to say that sort of thing I