ng every day.
Yet these people were the cleanest Boers in the colony.

The vrow met them, with a snow-white collar and cuffs of Hamburgh linen,
and the brats had pasty faces round as pumpkins, but shone with soap.
The vrow was also pasty-faced, but gentle, and welcomed them with a
smile, languid, but unequivocal.

The Hottentots took their horses, as a matter of course. Their guns were
put in a corner. A clean cloth was spread, and they saw they were to sup
and sleep there, though the words of invitation were never spoken.

At supper, sun-dried flesh, cabbage, and a savory dish the travellers
returned to with gusto. Staines asked what it was: the vrow told
him--locusts. They had stripped her garden, and filled her very rooms,
and fallen in heaps under her walls; so she had pressed them, by the
million, into cakes, had salted them lightly, and stored them, and they
were excellent, baked.

After supper, the accomplished Reginald, observing a wire guitar, tuned
it with some difficulty, and so twanged it, and sang ditties to it, that
the flabby giant's pasty face wore a look of dreamy content over his
everlasting pipe; and in the morning, after a silent breakfast, he said,
"Mine vriends, stay here a year or two, and rake in mine rubbish. Ven
you are tired, here are springbok and antelopes, and you can shoot
mit your rifles, and ve vil cook them, and you shall zing us zongs of
Vaderland."

They thanked him heartily, and said they would stay a few days, at all
events.

The placid Boer went a-farming; and the pair shouldered their pick and
shovel, and worked on their heap all day, and found a number of pretty
stones, but no diamond.

"Come," said Falcon, "we must go to the river;" and Staines acquiesced.
"I bow to experience," said he.

At the threshold they found two of the little Bulteels, playing with
pieces of quartz, crystal, etc., on the door-stone. One of these stones
caught Staines's eye directly. It sparkled in a different way from the
others: he examined it: it was the size of a white haricot bean, and one
side of it polished by friction. He looked at it, and looked, and saw
that it refracted the light. He felt convinced it was a diamond.

"Give the boy a penny for it," said the ingenious Falcon, on receiving
the information.

"Oh!" said Staines. "Take advantage of a child?"

He borrowed it of the boy, and laid it on the table, after supper.
"Sir," said he, "this is what we were raking in your kopjes fo