attorney’s bill of costs. Past four!” looking at his watch. “Now for a pipe; then a start.”

He picks himself up out of the pass, yawns and stretches. The tortoise, which had already stood motionless, its bright eye dilated with alarm, now subsides into its shell, hoping to pass for one of the surrounding stones; its scarabean competitor likewise is equal to the occasion, after its own manner, and falling over on its side, with legs stiff and extended, feigns death industriously. Meanwhile the aloe-dotted steep overhead is alive with the loud warning cries of the disturbed baboons, whose ungainly but nimble shapes—some fifty in number—may be seen making off helter-skelter up the hill, to disappear with all possible despatch over the brow of the same.

“Noisy brutes!” grumbles the wayfarer, shading his eyes to watch them. “But for your unprincipled shindy I could have done a good hour’s more snooze with all the pleasure in life. If only I had a rifle here—even a Government Snider—it would go hard but that one or two of you would learn the golden art of silence.”

Look at him as he stands there just six foot high in his boots—well-proportioned, broad-shouldered, straight as a dart. The face is of a very uncommon type, with character and determination in its regular, clear-cut features; but a look of insouciance in the eyes—which are neither grey nor blue, but sometimes one, sometimes the other—neutralises what would otherwise be an energetic and restless expression. The mouth is nearly hidden by a drooping, golden-brown moustache. In the matter of age the man would have satisfied a census collector by the casual reply, “Rising nine-and-twenty.”

Colonial born you would certainly not pronounce him. Yet not a touch of the “rawness” of the greenhorn or “new chum” would you descry, even if the serviceable suit of tancord and the quality of the saddle and riding gear lying on the ground did not betoken a certain amount of acquaintance with colonial life on the part of their owner.

He draws a rough cherrywood pipe from his pocket, fills and lights it, sending forth vigorous blue puffs which hang upon the drowsy air. He stands for a moment looking at the sun, and decides that it is time to start.

“Now, I wonder what has become of Sticks. The old scamp is given to erring and straying afar just when wanted. When I don’t require his services he’ll fool about the camp by the hour.”

Sticks was his horse. That estimable quadruped had 

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