ughters. Here then was a bright and
wholesome British home circle to which I, a lonely, knockabout sort of
semi-barbarian, had found a welcome; and indeed, while not outwearing
this, I believe I did not underrate it; for the bush path between my
trading store and Major Sewin's farm had become far more worn and easier
to be found by the unskilled stranger since its former occupant, a
bankrupt and stertorous Dutchman, had been obliged to evacuate it in
favour of its present owner.

Now, as Tyingoza spoke, I looked longingly down into the valley on the
other side. Away, where it wound beneath a towering cone, I could make
out a film of smoke, and was wondering whether it was too soon after my
last visit to send my horse down along the ten miles of rugged bush path
between it and where we sat--in something over the hour. I could get
back at midnight, or soon after, and time was no object to me in those
days. I had spent enough of it among savages to have acquired something
of their indifference to it. It mattered nothing what time I slept or
woke. If I felt sleepy I slept, if I felt hungry I ate--if I felt
neither I did neither--and that about summed up my rule of life, as, in
those days, it did that of many another circumstanced like myself. But
of making a point of turning in or turning out at a given time--no. I
had long parted with anything of the kind; indeed the fact that there
was such a thing as a watch or a clock on the place was the merest
accident.

Tyingoza produced his snuff-box--his Zulu conservatism had restrained
him from learning to smoke--and handed it to me. Then he helped
himself.

"They will not be here long," he said presently.

"No? Why not?" I answered, knowing to whom he referred.

"Their feet are planted on strange ground. They have built a house
where it cannot stand. _Au_! They are even as children these
Amangisi."

I did not resent the mild suggestion--"Amangisi" meaning English--
because I knew that the speaker did not include myself, practically a
son of the land, using the word as applicable to the newly imported
emigrant.

"They do not understand the people," he went on, "nor do they try to.
They treat the people as though they were soldiers under them. Now,
Iqalaqala, will that do?"

I agreed that it would not; in fact I had more than once ventured to
hint as much to Major Sewin--but that veteran, though a dear old man,
was likewise a stiff-necked one, and had not