at my
protests. He had many tales in the speech of North Devon to tell
me.

Many of them concerned the police, and were not altogether
unkindly, though disparaging. To Carrot, who could both ride and
find his way about the veld, the police seemed often deficient as
pathfinders and horsemen. The story he told about the five
European members of a police camp delighted me. One had got lost.
He who went out to look for him had got lost also. There was an
epidemic or something of the sort just then among the native
police, who, as a rule, piloted the troopers about and did
nurses' work at need. One after another of the remaining three
Europeans was engulfed in this exhaustive search. Then a grass
fire effaced the empty police camp. Carrot ended with a
speculation as to whether they were still looking for one another
or whether they had begun to miss their camp yet.

He was good in a feudal way, I gathered a severely feudal way to
his retainers. He threw pots but seldom. His eldest child he
seemed to worship in some sort of pagan fashion of his own.

The boy might have sat for a child Dionysos with his leopard-skin,
and his arm of golden copper thrown about his father's pot of
beer; black and big that pot should be painted.

No, his father wouldn't let him come away with me; at least, not
this year. He graciously hesitated twice or thrice. But he ended
with the same proposal each time a drink and a postponement of
decision. I wanted neither. I would not go on wasting my days on
postponements, and I meant to start with dawn on the second
morning. But at sunset the night before there had been a
surprise.

Just as the sun went down a strange native appeared in hot haste
and told a tale.

Two ma-Johnnies were coming down the wagon road with five or six,
native police and camp-followers. The Government was looking up
Carrot once again. He had had two pots of beer that afternoon, or
most of them, and was not quite himself, otherwise he might have
gone his way at his ease.

But as it was, a ghastly row woke the echoes, what with the
children crying, and the father singing and swearing, and the
mother scolding, as they tied up their bundles. Carrot kept
untying his in good humor, and searching for patent medicines and
a safety razor that could not be found. Then after he had started
he came back at least twice to give me a parting word. Meanwhile
the western glow began to be rivaled by an eastern glow. The moon
was brim