erfectly unexplanatory, uncommunicative, as to his doings in the
interim. He was a tall dark man, who might be any age compatible with a
hardy frame and untiring energy. A keen sportsman and keener
adventurer, he was ever on the look out for the possibilities underlying
up-country life; and, in curious contrast to his normally hard and
philosophic nature, was a tendency to fits of almost boyish excitement
and recklessness; which would break out when least expected, and with
apparently inadequate motive, and which were wont to land their owner in
positions of peril or difficulty, but which, by a curious compensating
element in nature, were none the less available to extricate him
therefrom right at the critical moment.

Now he made no reply to his companion's very confident and more than
ominous forecast. But more than one wistful glance did he send in the
direction of the great natural mausoleum. The King's grave! This rock
sepulchre would hold all that was weird and uncommon, and into it no
European eye had ever gazed. That was sufficient for one of Hilary
Blachland's temperament.

Soon the last resting-place of Umzilikazi, the Great King, was hidden
from sight behind. A few miles more and a strange phenomenon as of a
mighty cloud of dust and smoke, crowning a distant eminence, broke upon
the view in front, and through it a vast cluster of round grass roofs,
from the silent throne of the dead the pair had turned to front the
throne of the living, pulsating with humanity and its primitive
impulses--Bulawayo, the great kraal of Lo Bengula, son of that
Umzilikazi whose bones lay within the sombre heart of that great rock
pile behind.

Not on this, however, were their steps bent. Down in the valley a camp
was set, and the white tents of three waggons rose among the scant bush
on the banks of the Matya'mhlope, at the foot of the abrupt ridge of
shining stones which gives to that insignificant river its name. And as
our two wayfarers gained it the sun dropped, and in this latitude
without twilight the night began to fall.

Two other white men were seated in camp as these two arrived. Like
Christian Sybrandt, Young and Pemberton were traders and hunters, and
looked it; whereas the presence of Hilary Blachland with the outfit was
inconsequent. But that word more than rather summed up Hilary
Blachland. He was all keenness, however, on anything new and strange,
and now the impression had grown and grown upon him