u had done such a thing, and your life wouldn't
be worth a week's purchase."

The two men were riding over the site of the old Mahlahlanhlela Kraal--
distinguishable by its great circle of nearly overgrown hut floors, and
sherds of rude pottery, erewhile the head-quarters of a favourite
regiment of the Great King, whose tomb they were viewing. There it
rose, that tomb, away on the right, a great pile standing boldly against
the sky--prominent from the outermost edge of the rugged Matopo, all
tumbled rocks, and granite boulders and scant tree growth; in front, an
undulating sweep, bounded by the Inyoka ridge, the site of old Bulawayo.
The two men were dressed in serviceable and well-worn buckskin, and
carried rifles. Following a little distance behind them came a group of
natives, whose burden, the meat and other spoils of a young sable
antelope bull, testified to the nature of the errand from which they
were returning.

The countenance of both, darkened by sun and exposure, wore the same
expression of blended repose and latent alertness which a roving
up-country life seems invariably to produce. Sybrandt--he had dropped
the original "Van"--was Dutch by birth, though English by sympathies and
associations. Trader, hunter, gold-prospector, adventurer all round,
his life had been spent mainly on the confines of civilisation, or far
beyond the same; and what he did not know about natives, from the
Zambesi to Durban, from Inhambane to Walfisch Bay, nobody else did. He,
for his part, was no less known to them. "U' Klistiaan," as they called
him, in adaptation of his baptismal name, stood to them as a white man
who commanded their respect and confidence far and wide. Of cool
courage and unflinching resolution, a firm friend, and, while enmity
lasted, a determined and dangerous foe, he stood as high in the
estimation of the Zulu-speaking races as these qualifications could
place him, which is to say at the highest. He was a man of about forty;
in outward aspect of medium height and of sturdy and powerful build, his
dark hair and pointed beard just turning iron grey. His companion, whom
we heard him address by the name of Blachland, was something of a
mystery. Nobody knew much, if anything, about him, except that
originally he was an English importation with some years of up-country
experience, and that he came and went sporadically, disappearing for a
time, and turning up again as if he had been away about a week,
p