. One was
named 'Sundown.' another 'Sun-up' these both showed the homestead
not as it was now in mid-summer, but as I remembered it in late
winter or early spring, with some of the trees in full flower.

The other picture showed a charming group of children variously
colored among the rocks. I feasted my eyes on it for quite a long
while, noting its detail, which bewildered me. Surely no such
scene had been witnessed lately in all South Africa. Yet I knew
the rocks of the scene; they were close by, and the children were
painted some of them with familiar-looking faces. The title
underneath was 'Innocents.'

I did not see my friend for a week or so after that, and when I
did I did not think at first to ask about the pictures. However,
he began to tell the story of them himself. He was talking about
men on the road, a class with which he had a large acquaintance,
having lodged many of them. 'I had one here last week,' he said,
'a white man in clean white ducks. He stopped two nights, and
went outside painting most of the days. He gave me three
pictures. He could paint, couldn't he? I couldn't catch his name,
and he said he wasn't sure where he was going to stop next. But
he went up the Rosebery Road, and seemed to know his way about.
He hadn't got a bag, and he traveled very light just a blanket or
so and a loaf of bread and a cup. I shouldn't think he'd come to
much harm, would he?' I shook my head. 'He could paint, couldn't
he?' he said, glancing up at the pictures. I nodded. 'That's a
fancy picture,' I said; 'that of the children a pretty fancy. I
wonder what it means.' My friend Dick meditated. 'I don't see
much wrong in the painting anyhow,' he said.

The picture was indeed a pretty fancy there were children white
and black in it, and lambs and kids. The white children were
mixed up with the black curiously. One little sturdy Mashona
carried a white child in his arms. A white boy with fair hair,
aged nine or ten, carried a Mashona baby in a goat's skin
strapped to his back. The light of dawn was in the picture a cool
summer dawn. Between the rocks and the red-sprayed trees of our
country was, as it were, a lawn, close-bit by much feeding into a
fair copy of an English lawn. I looked hard at the picture.

'Those two Mashonas are like the children that were burnt in a
kraal this way,' I said pointing. 'I tried to dress their burns
but they both died.' Dick looked up as I pointed, but he said
nothing. He eschews