He shook hands with the ungloved hand; then drew on the glove, and touched
his horse, and rode slowly away. The boy stood to watch him.

Once when the stranger had gone half across the plain he looked back.

"Poor devil," he said, smiling and stroking his moustache. Then he looked
to see if the little blue handkerchief were still safely knotted. "Poor
devil!"

He smiled, and then he sighed wearily, very wearily.

And Waldo waited till the moving speck had disappeared on the horizon; then
he stooped and kissed passionately a hoof-mark in the sand. Then he called
his young birds together, and put his book under his arm, and walked home
along the stone wall. There was a rare beauty to him in the sunshine that
evening.


Chapter 2.III. Gregory Rose Finds His Affinity.

The new man, Gregory Rose, sat at the door of his dwelling, his arms
folded, his legs crossed, and a profound melancholy seeming to rest over
his soul. His house was a little square daub-and-wattle building, far out
in the karoo, two miles from the homestead. It was covered outside with a
sombre coating of brown mud, two little panes being let into the walls for
windows. Behind it were the sheep-kraals, and to the right a large dam,
now principally containing baked mud. Far off the little kopje concealed
the homestead, and was not itself an object conspicuous enough to relieve
the dreary monotony of the landscape.