k!"

"What's the matter?" I said excitedly, for my brother Bob came tearing
down to the enclosure, sending the long-legged young ostriches
scampering away towards the other side; and I knew directly that
something unusual must be on the way, or, after the warnings he had
received about not startling the wild young coveys, he would not have
dashed up like that.

"I dunno. Father sent me to fetch you while he got the guns ready. He
said something about mounted men on the other side of the kopje, so it
can't be Kaffirs. I say, do back me up, Val, and get father to let me
have a gun."

"Ugh! you bloodthirsty young wretch!" I cried as I started with him for
our place, now partly hidden by the orchard--apple and pear trees--I had
helped to plant seven years before, when father really pitched his tent
by the kopje, and he, Bob--a little, round-headed tot of a fellow then--
Aunt Jenny, and I lived in the canvas construction till we had built a
house of stone.

The orchard was planted long before the tent was given up--all trees
that father had ordered to be sent to us from a famous nursery in
Hertfordshire. How well I remember it all!--the arrival of the four big
bundles wrapped in matting, and tied behind a great Cape wagon drawn by
twenty oxen, whose foreloper was a big, shiny black fellow, who wore a
tremendous straw hat, and seemed to think that was all he needed in the
way of clothes, as it was big enough to keep off the sun (of which there
was a great deal) and the rain (of which there was little). In fact, he
wore scarcely anything else--only part of a very old pair of canvas
trousers, which he made comfortable and according to his taste by
cutting down at the top, so as to get rid of the waist, and tearing
close in the fork till the legs were about three inches long.

I remember it all so well: seeing the foreloper come striding along by
the foremost pair of oxen, holding one of them by its horn, and carrying
a long, thin pole like a very big fishing-rod over his shoulder, for use
instead of a whip to guide the oxen. Yes, I recollect it as if it were
only yesterday. I looked at him, and he looked at me. My eyes were
fixed upon those trousers; and I burst out, boy-like, into the heartiest
fit of laughter I ever had. As I laughed his eyes opened wider and
wider, and the corners of his mouth began to creep back farther and
farther till they nearly disappeared. Then, suddenly, his mouth flew
open, showing