h by which
the homestead was surrounded? Going inside, she threw on a straw hat,
then taking a light _umzimbiti_ walking-stick, she struck into one of
the forest paths.

She felt not the slightest fear or misgiving. The natives at that time
were deferential and submissive, and seldom encountered outside their
own locations. Wild beasts avoided the near proximity of human
habitations, at any rate in the full blaze of the afternoon sun, and if
she came upon a snake she could always run away; for she was not one of
those who imagine that the average serpent can leap--say, fifty feet--
through the air, or spends its time lying in wait for human beings for
the fun of biting them. So she wandered on beneath the feathery acacias
and gnarled wild fig, now stopping to disengage her skirt from the sharp
claws of a projecting spray of "haak-doorn," now bending down to examine
some strange and brilliant-winged beetle. A pair of "go-away" birds,
uttering their cat-like call, darted from tree to tree, keeping ever a
short distance before her. When she drew near the spray on which they
were perched on they would go again, and she could mark their conical
crests as again they plunged forward in arrow-like flight, only to perch
again as before.

A small stony kopje rose above the level of the brake. To this she
ascended, and, finding a shady spot, sat down upon a granite boulder to
rest. Away and around the gaze could range over a great expanse of
country, here smoothly undulating in a green sea of verdure, there
broken-up into stony hillocks. She could not see the homestead--that
was hidden by the gradual depression towards the river-bank, but the
river-bed was discernible by the winding slit its course left in the
expanse of foliage. And away in the golden haze of the blue horizon a
line of hills which she instinctively guessed were those of the
Sikumbutana.

So John Ames was so near and she would see him again; a matter of twenty
miles or so was no distance in up-country estimation! Yet, why should
this consciousness bring with it a feeling of elation? She was not in
the least in love with the man. She could mention his name, or hear it
mentioned, without a tremor in her voice or a stirring of the pulse.
She had not even gone to the pains of inquiring after him, or as to his
whereabouts, since her arrival at Bulawayo; yet now, suddenly an impulse
was upon her to see him again which amounted almost to a longing. She