was always that redeeming point in the Godforsakenness of the
place, and so on, and so on.

"That's right, Mrs Suffield; crowd it on thick! Nothing like making up
for lost time," he laughed.

"Well, but--you deserve it."

"Oh yes. I won't make that bad excuse which is worse than none, and
which you have been discounting before I made it. Besides, you owe me a
blowing-up. I'm afraid I dragooned you far harder, when you were handed
over to my tender mercies, crossing the river in the box."

"Well, you were rather ill-tempered," she admitted maliciously. "I
wonder how Mona would have stood it."

"Stood what? The crossing or the temper?" said Mona. "I've got a fine
old crusted stock of the latter myself."

"You have," assented Roden.

"That's rude."

"Your own doing," was the ready rejoinder. "You left me the choice of
two evils, though, Miss Ridsdale. Wouldn't it be ruder still to
contradict a lady?"

"Go on, you two hair-splitters!" laughed Grace. "Mr Musgrave, I've put
you in the same room you had last time. You know your way. Supper will
be ready directly."

"And you'd better turn on a fire in the sitting-room, Grace," said
Suffield. "The days are hot for July, in this high veldt, but the
nights are nipping. Besides, like a nigger, I'm keen on a fire to smoke
the evening pipe beside, when one can invent the shadow of an excuse for
lighting one. It's more snag, you know."

And so it was. Seated there at the chimney-corner smoking the
post-prandial pipe, while the burning logs crackled brightly, and
conversation flowed free and unrestrained, varied by a song or two from
Mona, as also from Suffield, who was no mean vocalist, and the prospect
of some sport on the morrow, it occurred to Roden that life as at
present constituted was a fairly enjoyable thing. That illustrious, if
out-of-the-world township, Doppersdorp, might not have been precisely
the locality he would have chosen as an abiding place; but even it
contained compensating elements.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

CONCERNING THE CHASE.

"Well, you two Sabbath-breakers!" was Grace Suffield's laughing greeting
to her husband and guest on the following morning, as she joined the two
on the _stoep_, where they were cleaning and oiling a rifle apiece
preparatory to the day's doings. "So you're not to be persuaded into
abandoning your wicked enterprise?"

"It's the only day a poor hard-worked Civil Servant has the whole of,
Mrs Suffield," a