each of their shrewd and rather good-looking countenances is lighted by a pair of clear, penetrating eyes. The stranger chucks them a bit of the coveted plant, and asks how much further it is to Seringa Vale.

“Over there,” replies one of the Kafirs, pointing with his stick to the second rise in the ground, about two miles off. With a brief good-night the horseman touches up his nag and breaks into a gentle canter, while the natives, collecting their stock—which has taken advantage of the halt to scatter over the veldt and pick up a few mouthfuls of grass—resume their way.

The sun has gone down, and the white peak of the Great Winterberg towers up cold and spectral to the liquid sky, as the horseman crests the ridge indicated, and lo—the broad roof of a substantial farmhouse lies beneath. Around, are several thatched outbuildings, and the whole is charmingly situated, nestling in a grove of seringas and orange trees. There is a fruit-garden in front of the house, or rather on one side of it, though it may almost be said to have two fronts, for the verandah and the stoep run round the two sides which command the best and widest view, while another and a larger garden, even more leafy and inviting-looking, lies down in the kloof. Close to the homestead are the sheep and cattle kraals, with their prickly thorn-fences, into one of which a white, fleecy flock is already being counted, while another, preceded by its voerbok (Note 2) is coming down the kloof, urged on by the shout and whistle of its Kafir shepherd. The cattle enclosure is already alive with the dappled hides of its denizens, moving about among whom are the bronzed forms of the cattle-herd and his small boys, who are busily employed in sorting out the calves and shutting them up in their pen for the night, away from their mothers, so that these may contribute their share towards filling the milk-pails in the morning. Behind the kraals stand the abodes of the Kafir farm servants, eight or ten beehive-shaped huts to wit, and stepping along towards these, calabash on head, comes a file of native women and girls who have been to draw water from the spring. They sing, as they walk, a monotonous kind of savage chant, stopping now and then to bawl out some “chaff” to the shepherd approaching with his flock as aforesaid, and going into shrill peals of laughter over his reply.

The traveller draws rein for a little while, till the counting-in process is accomplished, then rides down to the kraal gate and dismounts. A man turns away from giving some final directions to the Kafir who is tying up the gate—an old man, over whose head at least seventy summers must 

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