stunted bush, and had come upon no sign of human habitation, but the
remains of a burnt kraal, and a down-trampled and now uncultivated mealie
field, where a month before the Chartered Company's forces had destroyed a
native settlement.

Three times in the day it had appeared to him that he had returned to the
very spot from which he had started; nor was it his wish to travel very
far, for he knew his comrades would come back to look for him, to the
neighbourhood where he had last been seen, when it was found at the evening
camping ground that he did not appear.

Trooper Peter Halket was very weary. He had eaten nothing all day; and had
touched little of the contents of a small flask of Cape brandy he carried
in his breast pocket, not knowing when it would again be replenished.

As night drew near he determined to make his resting place on the top of
one of the kopjes, which stood somewhat alone and apart from the others.
He could not easily be approached there, without his knowing it. He had
not much fear of the natives; their kraals had been destroyed and their
granaries burnt for thirty miles round, and they themselves had fled: but
he feared, somewhat, the lions, which he had never seen, but of which he
had heard, and which might be cowering in the long grasses and brushwood at
the kopje's foot:--and he feared, vaguely, he hardly knew what, when he
looked forward to his first long night alone in the veld.

By the time the sun had set he had gathered a little pile of stumps and
branches on the top of the kopje. He intended to keep a fire burning all
night; and as the darkness began to settle down he lit it. It might be his
friends would see it from far, and come for him early in the morning; and
wild beasts would hardly approach him while he knelt beside it; and of the