off to bed. To-morrow I'll show you round the farm,
and we will have a talk about business. Good-night to you, Captain Niel.
Good-night!"

CHAPTER III

MR. FRANK MULLER

John Niel woke early the next morning, feeling as sore and stiff
as though he had been well beaten and then wrapped up tight in
horse-girths. He made shift, however, to dress himself, and then, with
the help of a stick, limped through the French windows that opened from
his room on to the verandah, and surveyed the scene before him. It was
a delightful spot. At the back of the stead was the steep boulder-strewn
face of the flat-topped hill that curved round on each side, embosoming
a great slope of green, in the lap of which the house was placed. It
was very solidly built of brown stone, and, with the exception of the
waggon-shed and other outbuildings which were roofed with galvanised
iron, that shone and glistened in the rays of the morning sun in a way
that would have made an eagle blink, was covered with rich brown thatch.
All along its front ran a wide verandah, up the trellis-work of which
green vines and blooming creepers trailed pleasantly, and beyond was the
broad carriage-drive of red soil, bordered with bushy orange-trees laden
with odorous flowers and green and golden fruit. On the farther side
of the orange-trees were the gardens, fenced in with low walls of rough
stone, and the orchard planted with standard fruit-trees, and beyond
these again the oxen and ostrich kraals, the latter full of long-necked
birds. To the right of the house grew thriving plantations of blue-gum
and black wattle, and to the left was a broad stretch of cultivated
lands, lying so that they could be irrigated for winter crops by means
of water led from the great spring that gushed out of the mountain-side
high above the house, and gave its name of Mooifontein to the place.

All these and many more things John Niel saw as he looked out from the
verandah at Mooifontein, but for the moment at any rate they were lost
in the wild and wonderful beauty of the panorama that rolled away for
miles and miles at his feet, till it was bounded by the mighty range of
the Drakensberg to the left, tipped here and there with snow, and by the
dim and vast horizon of the swelling Transvaal plains to the right and
far in front of him. It was a beautiful sight, and one to make the blood
run in a man's veins, and his heart beat happily because he was alive
to see it. Mile upon mile