her love
which she had poured forth all upon him. Her presence seemed with him
now in the distilling fragrance of the sweet calm night--would that it
really were--to charm away the despondency that lay upon his soul.
Despondency was not strength, she had said in her brave encouraging way.
No, it was not; but how throw it off? Suddenly an idea struck him.

He went into the house. Two guns in their covers stood in a corner.
One of these he unsheathed, and opening the breech looked down the
barrels against the light. They were clear and without a speck. One
was rifled, to take the Number 2 Musket ammunition, the other was smooth
bore Number 12, and a complete cylinder, guiltless of choke. From a
drawer he took half-a-dozen cartridges to fit each; those for the smooth
bore being loaded with loepers--three and three and three, in layers, a
charge calculated to stop the very devil himself. Then changing his
boots for a pair of _velschoenen_ made of the softest of raw hide and
quite noiseless, he set forth.

The dogs, lying outside, seeing the gun, sprang up, squirming and
whining with delight. It needed quite an amount of persuasion,
objurgatory, and running to a mild kick or two, to convince them that
their aid and companionship was not in the least wanted upon this
occasion. It even required the argument of a couple of stones--flung so
as carefully to avoid hitting them--when he reached the outer gate,
conclusively to convince them. Then Wyvern took his way along the
narrow bush track heading for the entrance to the deep wild kloofs--
alone.

He had struck the spoor of a leopard--from the pads an unusually large
one--that morning, leading along the bottom of the mazy network of
kloofs. Into one of these it had led--the one known as the Third
Kloof--and from the passing and repassing of the tracks, now faint, now
fresh, he had deduced that the beast was in the habit of using this way
as a regular path. Here, then, was a cure for despondency--temporary
but exhilarating--but the exhilaration was somewhat dashed by the
thought that this was probably the last time he would undertake such a
quest here, in what his neighbours characterised by the term of his
"vermin-preserve" and voted an unmitigated pest.

Shod in silence he took his way noiselessly along. The bottom of the
kloofs was smooth and grassy, which, of course, favoured him. Faint
zephyrs of the still night air fanned his face, and here and there a
ru