ad been dried in the sun. There were holes
instead of windows, and there was no door in the open doorway; and on
the top of the little building was a roof of rough, reedy grass.

These were the days that you heard of in the last story, when Khama,
seeing his tribe attacked by the fierce Lobengula, rode out on
horseback at the head of his regiment of cavalry and fought them and
beat them, and drove away Lobengula with a bullet in his neck.

For two years Shomolekae, learning to read better every day, and
serving John Mackenzie faithfully in his house, lived at Shoshong.

Sometimes Shomolekae took long journeys with wagon and oxen, and at
the end of two years he went with Mackenzie a great way in order to
buy windows, doors, hinges, nails, corrugated iron, and timber with
which to build a better church at Shoshong.

When Shomolekae came back again with the wagons loaded up there was
great excitement in the tribe. Hammers and saws, screw-drivers and
chisels were busy day after day, and the missionary and his helpers
laid the bricks one upon another until there rose up a strong church
with windows and a door--a place in which the people went to worship
God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Again Shomolekae went away by wagon, and this time he travelled away
by the edge of the desert southward until at last he reached the
garden at Kuruman where as a boy he used to frighten the birds from
the fruit trees. He was now a very clever man at driving wagons and
oxen.

This, as you know, is not so easy as driving a wagon with two horses
is in Britain. For there were as many as sixteen and even eighteen
oxen harnessed two by two to the long iron chains in front of the
wagon.

There were no roads, only rough tracks, and the wagon would drag
through the deep sand, or bump over great boulders of rock, or sink
into wet places by the river. But at such times one of the natives
always led the two front oxen through the river with a long thong that
was fastened to their horns.

So, in order to drive a wagon well, Shomolekae needed to be able to
manage sixteen oxen all at once, and keep them walking in a straight
line. He needed to know which were the bad-tempered ones and which
were the good, and which pulled best in one part of the span and which
in another; and how to keep them all pulling together and not lunging
at one another with their horns.

Shomolekae also had to be so bold and daring that, if lions came to
eat the