sted himself and his steed, and still farther diminished the
contents of his saddle bag, Roden filled and lighted another pipe, and
began to think about saddling up.

He sent a last look around, but no sign of life was there, save for a
faint column of blue smoke rising in the distance. Attentively he gazed
at this. Did it mean another burning house, a smoke signal, or a camp
of friend or foe? It was impossible to say; at any rate, it was a long
way off, and what was more to the purpose, nowhere near his line of
route. Satisfied on this point, and feeling on excellent terms with
himself and all the world, he rose and made his way down to where his
steed was grazing.

But now some trouble awaited; for he had knee-haltered the animal with
too great a length of _reim_, and rather carelessly as to the knot,
consequently the latter had slipped, leaving the horse almost as free as
though he were loose. So now as he walked quietly up, speaking softly
and soothingly, to secure his steed, Roden saw that he would need all
his patience.

For the young horse was of a fidgety habit, and, as though aware of his
power, no sooner did his rider extend a hand to catch him than, with a
loud snort, he swung wildly round, placing his tail where his head
should be. Another attempt, more coaxing, only met with a like result.
The exasperating brute would allow the hand to approach within halt a
yard of the _reim_, then would slew round as before.

This trick is a common enough one in the `cussedness' of equine economy.
It is about as exasperating as anything in this wicked world, and if
there exists an average man who, being the victim of it, refrains from
using terrible language aloud or _secreto_, why, in the plenitude of our
experience we never fell in with him. At any rate, Roden Musgrave was
not such a one, though he so far varied upon usual custom by damning,
not the horse, but himself, and his own inconceivable carelessness in
making such a bungling job of the knee-haltering.

The plan under the circumstances is craftily to manoeuvre the obdurate
quadruped against a bush or a fence. Here, of course, there was no
fence, and the only bush was that which grew around the stony _kopje_ to
which we have alluded, and thither, in accordance with the much-belauded
equine intelligence--which, by the way, invariably shows itself in the
wrong direction--nothing on earth would persuade this fiendish beast to
proceed. Anywhere else, but