a Hindoo idol. And what luck to have a side wind
instead of a forward one!"

At twelve they stayed in a welcome piece of shade for their first
veldt meal. Lounge-chairs were untied for them to rest in, and an
excellent little repast prepared by the cook-boy, while the small
black imp waited upon them like a trained butler. Then they dozed
through the hot midday hours, continuing their journey to those
alluring blue distances after all were rested, until they reached the
first night's camping place and pitched their tents near a rippling
river--as Diana described it, "all mixed up with stars, and dreams,
and niggers, and kopjes, and mules."

For a week they journeyed on, each day seeming lovelier than the last,
and the dreaming repose of a great content hovered over all of them.
There was no need for haste and none was made. There was no pitiless
urging of tired mules as in the post-cart; no shouting natives, no
hurried pauses for a snatched rest. The mules jogged contentedly
along, realising they were in good hands, and always through the
midday hours everyone lazed. An early spring had brought many young
leaves out, although it was still August, and these were often
beautiful shades of red, bronze, orange, scarlet, gold, and
emerald-green, beyond or through which blue kopjes took on a yet more
dream-like, ethereal air. Sometimes the red road wound along through
woods of loveliest colouring, carpeted already with spring flowers.
Sometimes it ran out into open spaces where the trees stood back in
line, revealing wonderful glimpses of the fascinating land to their
eager gaze.

Strange, fantastical, granite kopjes like mighty mausoleums adorned
with ilex trees barred their path, and Diana was convinced some of
the bones of her ancestors lay buried there, because she felt so
weirdly at home with them.

"This is my natural environment," she informed her uncle and the
engineer. "I ought to be dwelling here in state, as the favourite wife
of the greatest chief in the land."

Meryl grew dreamier with every day, though sometimes her eyes were sad
as she looked out over the country, as if she already loved it with a
love that was akin to pain.

Had he, that great Imperialist, looked at it with those calm eyes of
his, and known just that sense of aching love?... When he journeyed
out into its enchanting untrodden spaces, accompanied only by some
kindred spirit, had the land risen up and enslaved and enfolded him,
like som