rkened room, and never troubled any one. The Mozambiquer took care
of her, and she would not allow any one else to touch her; would not so
much as allow any one else to see her foot uncovered. She was strange
in many ways, but she paid well, poor thing; and now the Mozambiquer was
going, and she would have to take up with some one else.

The landlady prattled on pleasantly, and now carried away the tray with
the breakfast things. When she was gone Gregory leaned his head on his
hands, but he did not think long.

Before dinner he had ridden out of the town to where on a rise a number
of transport-wagons were outspanned. The Dutchman driver of one wondered
at the stranger's eagerness to free himself of his horses. Stolen
perhaps; but it was worth his while to buy them at so low a price. So
the horses changed masters, and Gregory walked off with his saddlebags
slung across his arm. Once out of sight of the wagons he struck out of
the road and walked across the veld, the dry, flowering grasses waving
everywhere about him; half-way across the plain he came to a deep gully
which the rain torrents had washed out, but which was now dry. Gregory
sprung down into its red bed. It was a safe place, and quiet. When he
had looked about him he sat down under the shade of an overhanging bank
and fanned himself with his hat, for the afternoon was hot, and he had
walked fast. At his feet the dusty ants ran about, and the high red bank
before him was covered by a network of roots and fibres washed bare by
the rains. Above his head rose the clear blue African sky; at his side
were the saddlebags full of women's clothing. Gregory looked up half
plaintively into the blue sky.

"Am I, am I Gregory Nazianzen Rose?" he said.

It was also strange, he sitting there in that sloot in that up-country
plain!--strange as the fantastic, changing shapes in a summer cloud. At
last, tired out, he fell asleep, with his head against the bank. When he
woke the shadow had stretched across the sloot, and the sun was on the
edge of the plain. Now he must be up and doing. He drew from his breast
pocket a little sixpenny looking-glass, and hung it on one of the roots
that stuck out from the bank. Then he dressed himself in one of the
old-fashioned gowns and a great pinked-out collar. Then he took out a
razor. Tuft by tuft the soft brown beard fell down into the sand, and
the little ants took it to line their nests with. Then the glass showed
a face surrounded