ssibility, a spice of fear came
to season the excitement, only serving however to enhance its original
zest.

In the fair scene spread out before these two there was little enough to
suggest the growlings and roarings of ravening beasts making terrible
the dark night hours. The undulating roll of veldt, green after the
recent rains, and radiant in the golden morning, sparkled with
innumerable dewdrops. Birds called cheerily; bird-wings glanced through
the air in gorgeous colour and flash of sheeny streak; and the great
granite kopjes to the westward, rising to the cloudless blue, seemed to
tower twice their height in the shimmer and warmth of the newly risen
sun.

Upon this lovely outlook one of the two was gazing with a moody brow and
a heavy heart. Suddenly he started.

"Who's this, I wonder?" he exclaimed, shading his eyes.

A speck in the distance had arrested his attention--an approaching
speck. It might have represented a horseman, almost certainly it did.

"I believe it's Blachland," went on Spence. "I'll get the binocular,
and see."

The advancing object was hidden from sight as he dived into the house.
But it reappeared about the same time he did. It now took shape as a
horseman.

"Yes, it is Blachland," he went on, the glasses at his eyes. "But he's
all alone. Where's his waggon and Sybrandt? I wonder if--" And he
broke off, looking somewhat anxiously at his companion as he finished
the unspoken thought to himself. What if Blachland were returning thus
with a purpose--making a sort of surprise return? What if he had
intended returning much earlier, but had miscalculated time and
distance? What if he _had_ returned much earlier? Oh, Great Heaven!
And the thinker's countenance reflected the consternation of the
thought.

That of his companion, however, betrayed no responsive qualm. It was as
serene and unruffled as though she had never beheld the man at her side
until five minutes ago.

"Now, Justin," she said, as they watched the approach of the horseman.
"I want to give you a word of warning. First of all, you are not to
greet him as if he had just risen from the dead, and you wish to
goodness he hadn't. Secondly, you are not to look at and talk to me in
a sort of wistful and deathbed manner whenever you have occasion to look
at and talk to me. Remember, he's mighty sharp; I don't know any one
sharper. Come, brisk up, dear, and pull yourself together and be
natural, or you'll giv