ification; indeed he would not have
been human were it otherwise.

"Well, Upton, what's the news?" said Frank, as they were outspanning,
and unpacking the contents of the buggy. "Is it going to be war?"

"Don't know. Looks like it. The troops in Grahamstown and King are
getting ready for all they know how. Man, but things are looking nasty.
The Dutchmen up in the Rooi-Ruggensberg are as bumptious as they can
be. Two of them wouldn't let me look at their flocks at all. I shall
have to summon them, I suppose."

The duties of the speaker being to overhaul periodically the flocks of
all the farmers, Dutch and British, within a large area, in search of
the contagious and pestilential scab, it followed that he was in the way
of gauging the state of feeling then prevalent. Personally, he was a
very popular man, wherefore the fact of his having met with active
opposition was the more significant as to the state of the country.

"They're just the same here," said Frank. "For my part, the sooner we
have a war the better. I wish our farm was somewhere else, though. We
are too much in among the Dutch here for things to be pleasant for the
mother and May when the fun does begin."

Now Master Frank, though carefully omitting to specify what had led up
to the incident of the road wherewith this chapter opens, expatiated a
great deal upon the incident itself in the course of the evening,
thereby drawing from his mother much reproof, uttered, however, in a
tone that was more than half an admiring one. But in that of May was no
note of admiration. It was all reproving.

"You are much too quarrelsome, Frank," she said; "I don't see anything
particularly plucky in always wanting to fight people. It's a good
thing you had someone to look after you." And the swift glance which
accompanied this should have been eminently gratifying to the "someone"
who had looked after him.

"Oh, if you're all down upon a chap, I shall scoot. I'm going round to
give the horses a feed. Coming, Upton?"

"_Ja_," replied that worthy; and they went out. So did Mrs Wenlock,
having something or other to see to in the kitchen.

There was silence between the two thus left. Colvin, sitting back in a
cane chair, was contemplating the picture before him in the most
complacent state of satisfaction. How pretty the girl looked bending
over the ornamental work she was engaged in, the lamplight upon her wavy
golden hair, the glow of freshness and