d he put up; he was shown the very room in which they
had slept. The coloured boy who had driven them to the next town told
him in which house they had boarded, and Gregory went on. In that town
he found they had left the cart, and bought a spider and four greys,
and Gregory's heart rejoiced. Now indeed it would be easy to trace their
course. And he turned his steps northward.

At the farmhouses where he stopped the ooms and tantes remembered
clearly the spider with its four grey horses. At one place the Boer-wife
told how the tall, blue-eyed Englishman had bought milk, and asked the
way to the next farm. At the next farm the Englishman had bought a bunch
of flowers, and given half a crown for them to the little girl. It was
quite true; the Boer-mother made her get it out of the box and show
it. At the next place they had slept. Here they told him that the great
bulldog, who hated all strangers, had walked in in the evening and laid
its head in the lady's lap. So at every place he heard something, and
traced them step by step.

At one desolate farm the Boer had a good deal to tell. The lady had said
she liked a wagon that stood before the door. Without asking the price
the Englishman had offered a hundred and fifty pounds for the old thing,
and bought oxen worth ten pounds for sixteen. The Dutchman chuckled, for
he had the Salt-riem's money in the box under his bed. Gregory laughed
too, in silence; he could not lose sight of them now, so slowly they
would have to move with that cumbrous ox-wagon. Yet, when that evening
came, and he reached a little wayside inn, no one could tell him
anything of the travellers.

The master, a surly creature, half stupid with Boer-brandy, sat on the
bench before the door smoking. Gregory sat beside him, questioning, but
he smoked on. He remembered nothing of such strangers. How should he
know who had been there months and months before? He smoked on. Gregory,
very weary, tried to wake his memory, said that the lady he was seeking
for was very beautiful, had a little mouth, and tiny, very tiny, feet.
The man only smoked on as sullenly as at first. What were little, very
little, mouths and feet to him. But his daughter leaned out in the
window above. She was dirty and lazy, and liked to loll there when
travellers came, to hear the men talk, but she had a soft heart.
Presently a hand came out of the window, and a pair of velvet slippers
touched his shoulder, tiny slippers with black flower