quaintance. Whitson listened with his usual impassiveness, and then
asked Langley how it was that "an old loafing nigger," as he expressed
it, had impressed him so remarkably. Langley replied that he did not
quite know, but he thought the effect was largely due to the man's
teeth. But all the same he was "a very entertaining old buffer."

Next afternoon Langley was so impatient to resume conversation with his
new friend that he repaired to the ant-heap quite half an hour before
the appointed time. He had not, however, long to wait, as Ghamba soon
appeared, emerging from a donga a couple of hundred yards away.

Langley was more impressed than ever. Ghamba told him all about the
Basutos, among whom he had lived; about the old days in Natal, before
even the Dutch occupation, when Tshaka's impis wiped whole tribes out of
existence; of the recent wars in Zululand and the Cape Colony, and as
to the probability of future disturbances. Charmed as was Langley by the
old man's conversation, he felt that on this occasion there was a little
too much of it; that Ghamba was not nearly so good a listener as he had
been on the previous day; so when the latter at length put a question
to him, thus affording an opportunity for the exercise of his own pentup
loquacity, Langley felt elated, more especially as several inquiries
were grouped together in the one asking. Ghamba asked whether anything
had been heard of Umhlonhlo; whether the capture of that fugitive rebel
was considered likely, and whether it was true that a reward of five
hundred pounds had been offered by the government for his capture, dead
or alive.

Umhlonhlo, it will be remembered, was the Pondomise chief who rebelled
in 1880, treacherously murdered Mr. Hope, the magistrate of Qumbu, and
his two companions, and who has since been an outlaw with a price on his
head.

Langley replied to the effect that it was quite true such a reward had
been offered as to Umhlonhlo's whereabouts, but that the government
believed him to be in Pondoland; that he was sure to be captured
eventually; that he, Langley, only wished he knew where Umhlonhlo was,
so as to have the chance of making five hundred pounds with which to buy
a certain nice little farm he knew of; and that should he ever succeed
in obtaining the reward, and consequently in taking his discharge and
purchasing the farm, he would be jolly glad if old Ghamba would come and
live with him. This is only some of what he said; wh