useful in other ways."

The object of their talk, and the girl's animadversion, had just emerged
from one of the huts. For a moment he stood gazing at the weather, then
drawing his ample green blanket close around his tall form, he strode
away over the veldt.

"Why have you got such a down on him, child? He's respectful and civil
enough to you, isn't he?"

"Oh yes--at least for the present."

"Why should he not continue to be?" went on her father.

"I don't know. No, I don't. I suppose it's--instinct."

She still stood gazing out of the window, and her face was troubled,
even resentful. She could not forget the expression that had come upon
her father's face, fleeting as it had been, when they had first met this
man yonder on the summit of Sipazi mountain. It was not his first
meeting either, for he had brought home the story of the Zulu's
insolence on that other occasion. She felt puzzled--even suspicious,
and therefore resentful.

It was a grey, drizzling afternoon, and the splendour of forest and
mountain, lovely in the sparkle of blue sky and dazzling sun, was
blotted out by rain and mist, with dreary and depressing effect. Low
clouds swept along the base of the heights, whirling back now and then
to display some great krantz such as the face of Sipazi, its altitude,
multiplied by the dimness, looming up in awful grandeur, to fade again
into the murk.

Instinct! Thornhill did not like that word, and it was no mere flash in
the pan either. The child was so confoundedly sharp at leaping to
conclusions; generally accurate ones too, and that with nothing to go
upon. He had tried to assume his normal unconcern of speech and manner,
in talking on this subject--for this was not the first time it had been
brought up--and could only wonder if he had succeeded.

"Are you afraid of him, then?" he said at last.

"Afraid? No. But I don't like him, and I wish he'd clear. I don't
believe he's up to any good at all here."

"Now, dear, aren't you just a trifle unreasonable as to this particular
`bee' of yours?" said her father, somewhat annoyed. "You say you're not
afraid of him, and I've told you the man is useful to me in ways. Now
am I to run this farm or are you? That's the question."

"I don't want to run the place, of course. I'm only afraid this paragon
of yours is aiming at doing that. What a perfectly beastly afternoon,"
she broke off, turning away from the window.

"Ah well, we can do wit