te."

"Oh, there's nothing much the matter with me, Mr. Hamlyn," he said.
"You will have some trouble with these fellows, unless I am mistaken. I
was told to look after you once, and I mean to do it."

(He referred to the letter that Lee had sent him years before.)

That night Owen stayed with us at the camp. We set a watch, and he took
the morning spell. Everything passed off quietly; but when we came to
examine our cattle in the morning, the lot that James had brought in
the night before were gone.

The river, flooded when we first came, had now lowered considerably, so
that the cattle could cross if they really tried. These last, being
wild and restless, had gone over, and we soon found the marks of them
across the river.

The Doctor, James, Dick, and I started off after them, having armed
ourselves for security. We took a sword a-piece, and each had a pistol.
The ground was moist, and the beasts easily tracked; so we thought an
easy job was before us, but we soon changed our minds.

Following on the trail of the cattle, we very soon came on the
footsteps of a black fellow, evidently more recent than the hoof-marks;
then another footstep joined in, and another, and at last we made out
that above a dozen blacks were tracking our cattle, and were between us
and them.

Still we followed the trail as fast as we could. I was uneasy, for we
were insufficiently armed, but I found time to point out to the Doctor,
what he had never remarked before, the wonderful difference between the
naked foot-print of a white man and a savage. The white man leaves the
impression of his whole sole, every toe being distinctly marked, while
your black fellow leaves scarce any toe-marks, but seems merely to
spurn the ground with the ball of his foot.

I felt very ill at ease. The morning was raw, and a dense fog was over
everything. One always feels wretched on such a morning, but on that
one I felt miserable. There was an indefinable horror over me, and I
talked more than any one, glad to hear the sound of my own voice.

Once, the Doctor turned round and looked at me fixedly from under his
dark eyebrows. "Hamlyn," he said, "I don't think you are well; you talk
fast, and are evidently nervous. We are in no danger, I think, but you
seem as if you were frightened."

"So I am, Doctor, but I don't know what at."

Jim was riding first, and he turned and said, "I have lost the black
fellows' track entirely: here are the hoof-marks, safe