with keen eyes, short-pointed beard, curling hair and clear-cut
features. His life had been varied, and there were passages in it which
he did not narrate even to his most intimate friends. He was of gentle
birth, however, and it was said that he had received a public school and
university education in England. At any rate he could quote the classics
with aptitude on occasion, an accomplishment which, coupled with his
refined voice and a bearing not altogether common in the wild places
of the world, had earned for him among his rough companions the
_soubriquet_ of "The Prince."

However these things may have been, it is certain that he had emigrated
to Natal under a cloud, and equally certain that his relatives at home
were content to take no further interest in his fortunes. During the
fifteen or sixteen years which he had spent in or about the colony,
Hadden followed many trades, and did no good at any of them. A clever
man, of agreeable and prepossessing manner, he always found it easy to
form friendships and to secure a fresh start in life. But, by degrees,
the friends were seized with a vague distrust of him; and, after a
period of more or less application, he himself would close the opening
that he had made by a sudden disappearance from the locality, leaving
behind him a doubtful reputation and some bad debts.

Before the beginning of this story of the most remarkable episodes
in his life, Philip Hadden was engaged for several years in
transport-riding--that is, in carrying goods on ox waggons from Durban
or Maritzburg to various points in the interior. A difficulty such as
had more than once confronted him in the course of his career, led to
his temporary abandonment of this means of earning a livelihood. On
arriving at the little frontier town of Utrecht in the Transvaal, in
charge of two waggon loads of mixed goods consigned to a storekeeper