other kinds of
leaders. He had been reading a lot about Ethiopianism, which educated
American negroes had been trying to preach in South Africa. He did not
see why a kind of bastard Christianity should not be the motive of a
rising. 'The Kaffir finds it an easy job to mix up Christian emotion
and pagan practice. Look at Hayti and some of the performances in the
Southern States.'

Then he shook the ashes out of his pipe and leaned forward with a
solemn face. 'I'll admit the truth to you, Davie. I'm black afraid.'

He looked so earnest and serious sitting there with his short-sighted
eyes peering at me that I could not help being impressed.

'Whatever is the matter?' I asked. 'Has anything happened?'

He shook his head. 'Nothing I can put a name to. But I have a
presentiment that some mischief is afoot in these hills. I feel it in
my bones.'

I confess I was startled by these words. You must remember that I had
never given a hint of my suspicions to Mr Wardlaw beyond asking him if
a wizard lived in the neighbourhood--a question anybody might have put.
But here was the schoolmaster discovering for himself some mystery in
Blaauwildebeestefontein.

I tried to get at his evidence, but it was very little. He thought
there were an awful lot of blacks about. 'The woods are full of them,'
he said. I gathered he did not imagine he was being spied on, but
merely felt that there were more natives about than could be explained.
'There's another thing,' he said. 'The native bairns have all left the
school. I've only three scholars left, and they are from Dutch farms.
I went to Majinje to find out what was up, and an old crone told me the
place was full of bad men. I tell you, Davie, there's something
brewing, and that something is not good for us.'

There was nothing new to me in what Wardlaw had to tell, and yet that
talk late at night by a dying fire made me feel afraid for the second
time since I had come to Blaauwildebeestefontein. I had a clue and had
been on the look-out for mysteries, but that another should feel the
strangeness for himself made it seem desperately real to me. Of course
I scoffed at Mr Wardlaw's fears. I could not have him spoiling all my
plans by crying up a native rising for which he had not a scrap of
evidence.

'Have you been writing to anybody?' I asked him.

He said that he had told no one, but he meant to, unless things got
better. 'I haven't the nerve for this job, Davie,