d ruddily in tiles and roses.

When I found words for these scenes they proved so many
battlefields, for Dick gave battle to my panegyrics impartially,
as I filed them up before him. He seemed to be very hard hit that
night, savagely bludgeoned by his doom of banishment. He said
that he hoped to come back someday. Anyhow, he said, would I try
to remember that he had chosen his burial-place a place where two
rivers commingled some two hundred miles north of where we were
camping? I promised to try. It seemed to me a pity that we Could
not interchange health and abiding-places he so ague-wrung, so
plainly doomed to go, yet withal so keen to stay. I, on the other
hand, full of home lust, England-amorous, yet so robust, so
lacking in any decent excuse to give over my job and go in that
green old age of mine. Then, at last, Delia Moore chimed or
rather clashed in, when she had roasted her monkey-nuts and found
a dish for them. She said that we were both wrong, we were both
so clearly called to do just what we were doing, he to go his
way, and I to stay on. But, contended she, her own move was a
more than doubtful one; she had been made into a rolling stone,
against her own judgment, by church despotism; the odds were
against her gathering moss to any reasonable extent. 'O,' she
appealed to me, 'look after my west-country work, whatever else
you do. My going east bids you in honor to stay.' I allowed her
plea with a nod. It was not till some while afterwards that I
propounded Africa's apology, as I had guessed it. Dick had been
talking, rather bitterly as well as floridly, about sighting the
cold Northern Star and losing the Southern Cross. I lay back and
gloated over the starry picture overhead through a crisscross
picture-mount of ragged grass. I left the confutation of the
scoffer to Miss Moore. There was an edge on many of her remarks
that night, and I could trust her to deal with him. But what she
said I have forgotten. Only I remember that he gave her best at
last. Then, and not till then, I broke silence, submitting
subjects for inquiry.

'Are not countries and subcontinents like men born under stars
What star was South Africa herself born under? Not the Lyre
surely, her poetry is comparatively so negligible. Not the
Plough, nor yet Aquarius, for she is not blest with overmuch
irrigation, nor brilliant at agriculture. Neither was it the
Northern Star surely; constancy does not easily beset her. No, it
was the Sout