ight have occurred to me at the time of our anxiety
and grief that Kendrew had displayed quite an unusual familiarity in his
references to my sister-in-law elect, but I suppose in the all-absorbing
anguish of my own loss I had no mind to give to any such trivial detail.
But as we were to be away a long time, the artful dog took advantage of
the circumstance to hurry forward his own ambition. It would never do,
he urged--they both urged--for the presence of her only sister to be
wanting at Edith's marriage, and in the result if there was not a double
wedding, at any rate there were two within a very short time of each
other. Well, we were all glad. Kendrew was a good fellow--a thoroughly
good fellow--and the farm he had inherited through poor old Hensley's
murder was a right good one. He was going to throw up transport-riding
and work it, he declared, and he did.

The old people, reft thus of both their daughters, decided to leave the
frontier and settle just outside Durban; an excellent climate and
country for those who have spent most of their lives in India. The farm
was turned over to Falkner; who, by the way, soon blossomed into a
remarkably able and energetic colonist. His sheer brutal pluck won him
the very real and undiluted respect of the natives, and after not more
than three attempts had been made upon his life, these came to the
conclusion that "Umsindo" was really great, and one whom, taking him all
round, it was no disgrace or disadvantage to serve; for with all his
faults he was open-handed, and this tells. He was a very devil, they
declared, but one that it was better to be with than against, and so he
prospered. But he soon found a better outlet for his pugnacity than
mere head punching, for the Zulu War broke out, and of course Falkner
must be in the thick of it. He served all through, in a corps of
Irregular Horse, and performed fine feats of daring on more than one
occasion and notably during the disastrous rout on the Hlobane Mountain,
for which he ought to have got the V.C. but didn't, and is a happy man
proportionately in that he cherishes a grievance. By a curious irony of
Fate too he was instrumental in saving the life of no less a personage
than our old antagonist, Dolf Norbury, for soon after the invasion of
Zululand, that worthy, having quarrelled with his friend and ally
Mawendhlela, found himself run very hard by that gin-loving potentate's
followers. He had made a desperate fight