flash and crack of sudden doom the scene changed. The antelope terror-stricken, were bounding across country and the girl leaping to her feet stood with eyes dilated and hand on heart. A gun had been fired and the dark body of one of the buck lay shuddering where a moment before it had been happily grazing.

Even as she stood staring, the figure of a man came from behind a far group of bush into the open—a tall hulking figure, in sloppy trousers belted at the waist, his gun over his shoulder. He was a long way off, but he walked straight as a die for the spot where the buck lay, stooped over it for a minute, then wiped something he held in his hand on the grass and stuck it back into his belt. Afterwards he tied a little strip of white rag onto a bush close by. He stood for a while looking after the rest of the herd, now black dots in the distance, then leisurely started to walk back in the direction he came. Never once had he looked towards where Vivienne, motionless as a statue stood in the shadow of the trees.

As she watched him, his figure momentarily disappeared behind a bush, and then for the first time immobility passed from her face and figure. Panic swept over her like a wave. Uttering short sharp cries, she began to run after the man, and, as she ran, the remembrance came over her like the memory of some frightful nightmare how she had run like this before—on and on and on—over rocks, through bush, in blinding sunshine and heavy darkness. And with the remembrance came such terror as lent wings to her feet—terror of losing sight of this human creature, and being left once more to the awful loneliness of the veld.

In a few moments she caught up to within thirty yards of the man, but long before that he had turned round and was watching her, his hat pushed back above his dark coarse face, his eyes full of astonishment.

“Hi! young fellah—stop that!”

If he had fired off his gun at her the result could not have been more effective. She drew up instantly, stopped tearing with both hands at the collar of her shirt, and stood staring into his eyes, panting heavily. He ran a shrewd glance over her.

“Where’d you spring from?” he demanded. She continued to stare at him. His voice which was common and brutal troubled her, and she did not like his face.

“Crazy!” he mused, looking at her keenly through half-closed eyes. “I’m not sure it wouldn’t be a good thing to give you a crack on the cocoa-nut and leave you to the aasvogels. You’ll only be a darned nuisance.”

She understood very well what he was saying, but somehow it did not terrify her. Nothing terrified her except the thought of being left alone. He tried her with another question.

“How long you been lost?”

She waved her hand towards the trees that fringed the river bank. Why she did this she had not the faintest idea.

“Ach!” he exclaimed impatiently, and turned on his heel. “Come on to my waggons, you fool.”

Without any indignation at his way of addressing her, she fell into step beside him. A few paces farther on, two natives bounded into sight, coming towards the man as though searching for him. He addressed them in Kaffir, pointing backwards to where he had left the buck. They gazed at Vivienne with impassive faces. Both parties continued on their way.

At last Vivienne’s eyes fell once more upon the broad dusty road, and a hundred yards or so from it two transport waggons were drawn up and outspanned. At the sight of them, and the smouldering fires, and a dog that jumped up barking, and the smell of newly-baked bread, something in the girl’s breast gave a great throb, and she had speech.

“Since yesterday,” she said, answering the question the man had asked her some twenty minutes past.

“Oh! you’ve found your tongue have you,” said he. “Since yesterday what?”

“Lost.”

“Lost since yesterday?” he stared at her wonderingly. “Oh! you’re mad, right enough, young fellah. The sun’s done your business for you. Here! come and eat.”

She was not too mad to understand that at any rate. There were some loaves of newly-made dough bread lying on a box, each broken in two to let the steam out. Several other boxes were scattered about and the man motioning her to one handed her half a loaf. She took it eagerly, and began to eat at once, almost wolfishly. When she had finished she looked longingly at the other loaves.

“No, you don’t,” said the man, “you’ve had enough for one go.” He had called out an order to some young native boys squatting by the fire, and they now set a tin kettle full of coffee and two beakers before him. He handed her one of the beakers full of hot black liquid and she drank even to the last drop.

“Now,” said he, speaking roughly and emphatically as if to a child with no intelligence. “What you want is sleep. Go and get up into that waggon tent, and sleep, do you understand? No use turning in on the ground for we’re going to trek in an hour. Get off with you now, and sleep till you burst.” His tone was the tone of a born bully, but the girl did not resent it. She climbed on to the waggon-brake as easily as if she had been doing so all her life. A rude, but not unclean mattress surged up to meet her, and she sank into it and slept.

The waggon was moving when she awoke, a delicious slow movement which softly swung the mattress suspended on a wooden frame across the tent, from side to side, and was accompanied by strainings and rumblings, musical creakings as of a ship at sea, but without any of the malaise incidental to ships, for the level of the mattress was always maintained. When the wheels jolted over stones, Vivienne got no more discomfort of it than a bird snug in its nest. From the horseshoe opening of the tent, she could see a light haze of dust rising perpetually from under the wheels, and through it, the landscape rolling out and retreating in changing panorama. Everything was wonderfully peaceful. Sometimes she could hear far ahead the crack of a whip, and a long-drawn-out native cry; then the waggon would lumber more hurriedly through the dust for a while, only to return to the slow even movement of serenely pacing oxen.

Lying idly against her pillow, she watched the sun fall swiftly behind a kop, and the whole land become suffused with orange-coloured light. Then the silver-green of bush and tree turned black and kopjes were etched in India ink against the tinted skies.

Her eyes wandered round the tent in which she was lying. There was hardly anything in it except the bed, but from the hoops supporting the canvas various odds and ends of things were hanging; a lantern, a cheap clock, a small tin-bound square of mirror, several coarse canvas bags, evidently stuffed with clothes.

“I suppose they belong to the man who found me,” she thought, and instantly recalled the coarse thick-lipped face, the peculiar sneering way his mouth drew up at one side under the ragged dark moustache, the sharp half-closed eyes. She recalled too his brutal way of speaking to her. No one had ever spoken to Vivienne Carlton in such a fashion, and it had impressed itself on her memory. In fact, it was the only thing that stood out since she knew she had lost herself by the pool. The rest was darkness.

“Hi! Young fellah!”

Her memory began from those words! But why “young fellah?” She had understanding now to marvel at such an address. Was it because of her short hair? The idea inspired her to