ous, lay curled up on the bedding that covered the bottom of the covered waggon. She listened apathetically to her husband's description of the doctor's abilities, and began a long recital of her ailments since marriage. Hartley interpreted with a perfectly straight face, and sotto voce advised that the administration of the physic be postponed to the last.

"These Boers watch the the effect of first doses very carefully, and if anything should happen-well, we had better not be near."

The proceedings had been overlooked through a tear in the tilt-cloth by a bulky girl of about seventeen, who presently showed herself at the front of the waggon.

Mother," said she, "you are verneuked. This is no real doctor. It is Cecil Rhodes and Dr Jameson. Look!" and she thrust into her mother's face a portrait of the great man cut from an English illustrated paper.

The announcement of the presence of a puff - adder in the bed would not have caused more consternation. The woman stared from the picture to Hartley, and shrank back as if she feared he would strike her. Her husband gave one glance at the portrait, then put a hand on Hartley's shoulder.

"Are you Rhodes?" he demanded; "for if you be, then this doctor must be Jameson."

Wilmot was startled; for though he understood no Taal, the production of the portrait

gave him a clue to what was happening. Hartley preserved his self-control: he was fully alive to the menace of the danger.

"If I were the millionaire Rhodes, should I be on trek with a rotten old waggon and a span of poor oxen?" he asked quietly.

The objection was invincible. The wealth of Rhodes was proverbial, and wealth to а Boer always took the concrete form of good cattle and a brandnew gaily painted waggon. Van Enter had commented on the ramshackle appearance of Smeer's transport plant. He turned to his daughter.

"You are foolish, Kaatje. Rhodes has much money. What would he be doing with a span like that?"

"But the Burghers took all his transport at Doornkop. It is Rhodes running away to Delagoa," the girl protested with angry insistence.

The situation looked serious, for this new argument weighed with Van Enter, as feminine logic ever does with a Boer.

"Did you ever hear that Rhodes could talk the Taal as I do? And what should Rhodes be doing here when he has all Cape Colony to move about in?" Hartley asked.

Van Enter was still doubtful. The outside Boer had only partially awakened from the nightmare terrors of the Raid, and though the event was four months old, it was being discussed in the remote districts as if it were the sensation of the previous week.

"Suppose I were Rhodes,"

Van Enter began to be impressed. The Boer conception of the character of the Colossus had been well presented.

"And you talk of likenesses. Many a foolish fellow has taken me for Rhodes, but I am not so nearly like him as you are to a Boer who stole my horse by Ermelo last year."

Van Enter looked uneasy for a few moments; then the humour of the situation appealed to him, for he laughed, and Hartley knew that all danger was past, since laughter kills the reason in an Afrikander.

Within ten minutes Van Enter had produced his bottle of carefully - conserved dop brandy, Wilmot had administered a half-pint of his physic to the vrouw, who took it with the nonchalance and ease of a confirmed hypochondriac, and all parted as friends.

Van Enter had invited Hartley to join forces with him and trek along the same route. The Yorkshireman quite appreciated the advantage of travelling under the escort of a Burgher known in and knowing the district, and would have been glad to accept the offer. But the progress of a Boer on trek with his flocks

In order to allay any lingering suspicion on the part of the Boer, Hartley accepted his escort through the last dorp on the line of march, but was careful to make no stay there; for dorp officialdom, having plenty of time on its hands, might prove inquisitive. Hartley did not feel comfortable till he was outspanned six miles beyond the dorp. He sent Smeer and the Kafirs back to make such purchases as were necessary, and took advantage of the dying moon to work a trek that put twenty miles between him and the representatives of Pretoria.

The country had again become uniformly wild and difficult, and a late rain had softened and cut up the roads into morass or gully. The oxen began to give up, and longer and more frequent rests and shorter treks were imperative.

The waits gave Wilmot ample opportunity for gratifying his exploratory instinct by rides off the track in quest of game and topographical enlightenment. Hartley still strongly opposed these solitary excursions, and by way of deterrent told many stories of new-comers, and even old hands, being left to die in the veld as the result of a broken limb obtained while scaling some rugged height. Veld lore has hundreds of these records, all sufficiently tragic to need no embellishment.

As they struck the road that

led to the once famous goldfields of the Murchison Range, they came upon an object-lesson in one of the most pathetic memorials ever erected over a nameless grave. Beneath a large thorn - tree was a heap of stones, almost breast-high, which tradition says marks the resting-place of an unknown white man, who, with a native servant, was prospecting and hunting in this region in the early Eighties. He died from the effect of some such accident as Hartley prophesied for Wilmot. Evidently the Kafir had possessed a larger share of the virtue of gratitude than is usually accredited to his race, for he had carved on the trunk of the tree in large rude letters this simple tribute to his dead

master

GOOD BAAS.

The district contains many uninscribed memorials to the unknown wardens of the Empire who have fallen by the way, whose memory lives only in some distant home beyond the seas, or perchance in the breasts of the companions of the trek, who passed through the most heartrending of travails that friendship can suffer, -watching one die to whom no help can be given, then digging his lonely grave and leaving him to the eternal solitude of the wilderness. Twice had Hartley undergone this ordeal, and the sight of these tragic reminders of the shadows of the veld depressed him for the rest of that day.

"Wilmot," said he, as the two sat smoking under the

waggon that evening, "I want you to make a note of something I have forgotten. If we pull this thing through, and anything should happen to me like that "-he had been telling the story of the death and burial of a companion in Mashonaland"all my share goes to Clarie. But bear in mind, Wilmot, only on condition that she doesn't marry that"

He jerked his pipe in the direction where Smeer was sleeping wrapped in his blankets.

"I'll see it through, Dick; but there's no occasion to talk of pegging out."

"I've got to finish up somewhere; why not now? It would be like my luck to knock under just as I had pulled off the biggest thing in my life."

This was the first time Hartley had made any reference to what Wilmot had long since guessed was an understanding between him and Clarie. felt encouraged question

to put

He

put a

"I suppose if it's not a funeral here, it will be a marriage there?"

Hartley replied quite frankly : "Yes, it's all fixed up. At any rate, I think it is, or it would be if I was not such an ass when it comes to talking to women. Look here"-he became very earnest "I don't know whether it's the same with other chaps, but when I'm away from Clarie I can think of all sorts of things I want to say to her, and the proper way to say them, but I'm hanged if it doesn't all slip away as soon as I get within

of the landmarks, and as few Boers had yet trekked in this direction, there came a time when Smeer had to confess that he had lost his bearings, and advised a halt of a day while he rode ahead to spy out the lay of the land. He returned next day with satisfaction writ large on his otherwise inexpressive face, and announced a heroic resolve. He had discovered the track, but to reach it one of two things had to be done either they must retrace their weary way some twenty miles, or the waggon must be tied up and lowered from the edge of the high plateau where they had halted into the valley below.

When the plan was explained to Wilmot he stood aghast. The side of the hill it was proposed to launch the waggon down sloped at an angle varying between thirty-five and fortyfive degrees. It was largely covered with grass, but the many gullies, projecting ridges, and huge boulders seemed to offer insuperable obstacles. To an Englishman the proposal appeared madness; but the craft of a Boer transport rider is a thing of marvel, that may only be witnessed and described by those whose probity and character stand assured. Johannes Smeer had ridden transport in the days when Kimberley was young, and the rates stood at thirty shillings the hundredweight, and were not too high. This same old waggon had bumped up the Gibraltar, from which the Devil's Kantoor looks down on Barberton, and Smeer had steered it across the Drak

ensberg through a pass that the stoutest Voortrekker deemed impregnable. To him the lowering of a five hundred feet down a slope, which he described as smooth as the roof of a house, was child's play.

Wilmot watched with fascinated interest the process of making the wheels immovable with strips of raw-hide called reims, the veld-man's rope,twine, and wire combined; helped to remove some of the smaller articles that could not be thoroughly secured; and with beating heart saw the oxen taken out and the heavy waggon directed sideways over the cliff. It ran for twenty yards with its own momentum, then brought up in a hollow. All hands ran to the rescue, laid a course diagonally down the side, and another space was cleared. The next lap was finished on the top of a boulder, and much labour and ingenuity were needed to bring the waggon into position for the next run; but half an hour's work did it, and then began a series of slides, some smooth and gentle, others a succession of shocks, bumps, and threats of capsize. Again and again Wilmot saw the unwieldy mass dashing on to destruction on a boulder; but a skilful deflection of the pole or disselboom, that stood out like a bowsprit or outrigger, had the effect of a touch on the tiller of a sailing boat, and steered the craft into smooth water. Within an hour the waggon was awaiting the arrival of the oxen, which had been taken down by a track

that required as careful negotiation as that of the waggon.

The climbing of difficult hills was a sight Wilmot could not endure, because of the suffering inflicted upon the patient, meek-eyed oxen. Frequently a couple of hours would be expended in getting the waggon up a hundred yards of steep incline by a process of zigzagging that would have been easy but for the process of turning the sixty yards of oxen on the trek chain: more than half the load had to be removed before the ascent could be attempted, and laboriously dragged up piece by piece. But the new track discovered by Smeer got gradually better, and the time- and temper - exhausting mountaineering became less frequent.

Occasionally Wilmot and Hartley rode off the track a few miles to put up a buck or bustard and guinea fowl, that relieved the monotony of the eternal tinned meats. But Hartley was not in favour of these excursions: he was fearful of encountering some wandering party of Boers, whose suspicions might be excited and cause delay, while they communicated with the district field-cornet. Hartley had thoughtfully provided himself with a prospector's licence in proper form; but it was more than probable that the fieldcornet would not be able to read it, and would insist on his right to prevent progress until an interpreter had been found. The Johannesburg papers had lately recorded cases of travellers being detained many days

until their documents had been verified, and with all his courage Hartley feared the consequences of having his name brought prominently under the notice of Boer officialdom. It had taken too great an interest in him of late.

On the tenth day of the trek the expected happened. They came upon an elderly Boer who, with his family and cattle, was trekking to his winter farm. His waggon was outspanned a few miles to the right, on the road that Hartley would have been travelling, but that it led through a dorp he was anxious to avoid.

The Boer pulled up fifty yards from the party, and sat in the saddle reconnoitring. After a time he cautiously advanced, announced that he was Van Enter of the Ermelo district, and put the customary questions to the travellers. Smeer acted as spokesman.

Instead of allaying suspicion, the old man's presence had the opposite effect. Van Enter could understand a party of ignorant Rooineks travelling off the road, but it puzzled him to find such a blunder made by a Boer like Johannes Smeer, and with Afrikander directness he put his suspicion into words. With tactless bluntness Smeer confessed that the Rooinek had chosen the route, as he did not want to pass through dorps.

Hartley heard the foolish statement, and drew on his resourcefulness promptly.

"I have gone off the road to find the elandsboontje [elands