was nothing of resentment in the tone, only pride, admiration, an
intense glory of possession. Nor did she intend to abandon the
argument, only to postpone it.

As they had said, they had known from the very first that they belonged
to each other. It was as surely a case of coming together as the
meeting of two converging rivers; and the process had been as easy, as
natural. What had drawn her towards him--apart from his physical
attractions, which were not slight, and of which, to do him justice, he
was free from any consciousness--was his total dissimilarity to any
other man she had ever met. She had told him so more than once--and the
reply had been deprecatory. Other men got on, he declared, while he--
only seemed to get back; dissimilarity, therefore, was rather a
hindrance than a thing to plume oneself upon.

"We are nearly there now," he said, regretfully, as the track they had
been pursuing here merged in a broader main road.

"Yes. But what a day we have had. Hasn't it been too sweet?"

"Too sweet indeed! A day to look back upon to the very end of one's
life."

A couple of miles further and they topped a rise. In the stillness the
sudden barking of dogs was borne to their ears. It came from where two
or three iron roofs glinted in the moonlight some three-quarters of a
mile on the further side of the valley. Both dismounted, for the rest
of the way she was to finish alone.

"Good-bye now, my own love, my sweet," he murmured as they stood, locked
together in a last long embrace. "I shall see you to-morrow, but it
will not be as it has been to-day."

"Not quite. But we will have other days like this. And--keep up
heart--remember, for my sake. When you are disposed to lose it, think
of me and feel sure that nothing can part us--as sure as that moon is
shining. Good-bye, my love. It is only `good-night,' though."

No more was said, as he swung her into the saddle. He himself stood
there watching her fast receding form, nor did he leave the spot until
the sudden subsidence of the canine clamour, told that she had reached
her home.

Then he mounted, and took his way slowly back through the moonlit
glories of the beautiful slumbering waste.

CHAPTER FIVE.

REBELLION.

Vincent Le Sage was riding leisurely homeward to his farm in the Kunaga
River Valley.

His way lay down a stony bush road, winding along a ridge--whence great
kloofs fell away on either side, clothed in thick, well-