Browne loitered up to the stall and amassed two month-old English
magazines. Then he stood by the stall, looking on to the
distances near and far behind it. Our feverish contact had not
spoilt much of the landscape there as yet. Beyond a few railway
sheds showed some bushes, as it were, of wild cherry-blossom,
flaunting a true white under the sky's true blue. Spring colors
dressed the woodland behind them red and bronze, and also the two
famous colors of Faeryland. Behind that, again, the view was
spread out widely diverse, certain blue hills standing up very
delicately. Meanwhile in the near foreground some Kaffir herds
helped the picture not a little. They were driving their flock
between the white-blossomed bushes.

Browne stood a long while and watched that landscape. I would
have given something to have read his face all the while, but his
back was turned to us.

At last he began to pace up and down by the bookstall. Then he
stood to gaze again, scouring, as it seemed, the far distance
with eyes straining their utmost. Our eyes followed his.

Did not some ironstone kopjes rise up dimly to the north there?

Assuredly Browne saw those blue peaks and ridges, and remembered
them.

'Do you remember them?' I asked Drayton.

'Don't I just?' he said.

He began again in his chanting chorus tone: he was reading and
transposing from a pocket copy of Theocritus.

'They all call thee a "gipsy," gracious Africa, and "lean" and
"sunburnt," 'tis only I that call thee "honey-pale." Yea, and the
violet is swart, and swart the lettered hyacinth, but yet these
flowers are chosen the first in garlands. . . . Ah, gracious
Africa, thy feet are fashioned like carven ivory, thy voice is
drowsy sweet, and thy ways, I cannot tell of them.'

The engine whistled. Browne roused himself to my intense relief,
and climbed into the train.

'Good-bye,' I called to him as they steamed away.

'Au revoir,' he called back to me.

THE SCENTED TOWN (A TRIPPER'S TALE)

It is now more than two years since I was invalided out of my
country parish one bitter March, and sent on a southern voyage. I
had ten weeks to recruit in, and I passed by the Mediterranean to
the eastern coast of Africa. It was hard to tear myself away from
Zanzibar, but at last I went on southward and struck up into the
wilder country of the central tableland. I meant to take the rail
for Cape Town when my time should be up.

It happened in Easter week that I c