"I say," began Armitage, "here's a riddle--a regular Sunday one."

"Is there? Roll it up this way," said Claverton, from the other end of the table, where he was seated between Mrs Naylor and Ethel, for he resolutely defied the dividing custom above mentioned.

"Here you are, then. Why is Allen like Moses?" asked Armitage.

"Oh, villainous!" laughed Claverton. "Don't anybody attempt it. I really think you might trot out something a little more original, Armitage."

Of course, every one then and there tried hard to solve the conundrum, and, of course, half of them gave it up, and, of course, the reply came even as was to be expected: "Because he was drawn out of the water."

"Oh-h!" groaned the whole party; while the object of the aqueous jest sat and grinned placidly, and made play with his knife and fork as though he were the perpetrator of it instead of its b.u.t.t.

"I say, Allen," put in Naylor, on the other side, "has that shooting match between you and Hicks come off yet?"

"What are the conditions?" asked Armitage.

"Dollar a side--Target, the shearing-house door--Distance, five yards-- Hicks to be allowed four yards on account of his want of practice. I'll bet on Hicks;" and the speaker roared at his own sorry wit.

"Eh! what's that about me?" called out Hicks from the other end of the table, which was longer than usual, by reason of the advent of the Naylors with their five olive-branches. He had just caught his name.

"Nothing, old man, nothing; we were only talking of those three guinea-fowl you shot this morning, coming up," replied Armitage, grinning mischievously.

"But bother it, I had no gun," said Hicks, thrown off his guard for the moment by this bare-faced accusation of Sabbath-breaking, and fairly losing his head as he caught a reproachful glance from Laura, which seemed to say: "Didn't you promise me you'd leave your gun at home when you went out this morning?" For he had confidentially imparted to her his intention to take the trusty shooting-iron, as he was starting so early that there would be no one about to be scandalised; and Laura, who had her own ideas of right and wrong, had peremptorily forbidden his doing anything of the kind.

"I say!" exclaimed Armitage, with admirably-feigned amazement. He had taken in the other's look of confusion, and, incorrigible joker as he was, resolved to turn it to his own mischief-loving account.

"But, confound it!" began Hicks, wrathfully; for that mute upbraiding glance made him really savage with his tormentor, who he thought was carrying the joke too far. Chaff was all very well, but this kind of thing went beyond chaff, and he would give him a piece of his mind by-and-by.

"Er--n-no--of course--you hadn't a gun--I forgot--er--I--was thinking of yesterday," rejoined Armitage, with the well-simulated air of a man who has "put his foot in it," and is endeavouring to withdraw that unlucky member--and endeavouring deucedly badly, too.

"I say, Jack, what about the scorpion fight, eh?" and Hicks proceeded to narrate how he had found that unscrupulous joker in the thick of the useful and intellectual little amus.e.m.e.nt at which we saw him in the last chapter, thus drawing upon him the laughter and sallies of the a.s.semblage, under cover of which he said quietly to Laura: "I didn't really take the gun this morning, 'pon my word of honour I didn't; it's only that fellow's lies. He might draw the line somewhere; chaff's all very well, you know, but hang it, that's beyond a joke."

"Yes, I think it's really too bad of him. I oughtn't to have thought you did what you told me you wouldn't do," she replied, with an almost imperceptible stress on "me," and a glance which Hicks thought fully compensated for the former doubt. Leave we them beneath the friendly shelter of the noise at the other end of the table, and turn to the rest.

"Don't care, I won my bet," Armitage was saying.

"What! And so you were betting on it, too--and on Sunday! I think it's disgraceful of you," said Ethel.

"He's come up here to be reformed," put in Allen.

"Oh, you needn't talk," said Armitage, turning off the attack on to the last speaker. "Miss Brathwaite, what do you think of a fellow who comes down to my place on a Sunday, and bothers me to take out a bees' nest; on a Sunday, too!"

There was a great laugh at this. The notion of Allen bothering any one to take out a bees' nest, Sunday or any other day, struck them all as ineffably rich. He would rather travel twenty miles than embark knowingly in that lively enterprise. And then the joke about the stings, and the plunge into the river came out, and poor Allen was roasted unmercifully on the strength of it, and the fun grew apace, when a vivid flash darting in upon them, and playing upon the knives and gla.s.ses with a blue steely gleam, brought the conversation up with a round turn.

"We shall have a storm," said Mr Brathwaite, glancing at the window.

The deep azure of the heavens had become dark and overcast, and even as he spoke there pealed forth a long, angry roll of thunder.

A general move from the table now took place, and every one adjourned to the verandah, which looked out on the wide sweep of country const.i.tuting the great charm of the situation of the house. But now the joyous sunlight had disappeared, and the earth slept in a dread and boding stillness. Tall pillars of cloud, black as night, moved steadily on, their jagged edges taking the forms and faces of hideous and open-mouthed monsters. All nature seemed waiting for the battle of the forces of the air, the discharge of the pent-up cloud artillery which was to strike the awed surface of earth with its blasting fire. Then, athwart the hot, listening deadness of the atmosphere comes a dazzling flash, bathing the valley in a sea of flame; and a roll of thunder, long, loud, and close at hand, makes the expectant group, which is standing on the verandah to watch the storm, involuntarily start, and the silence is more intense than before. And now a great chain of fire shoots from the blackness immediately overhead, and before you could count one, an appalling crash shakes the solid old house to its very foundations, while the windows rattle like castanets.

"Let's go inside," suggested Ethel; "I don't like this."

"It's getting wicked," said Armitage. "It was just such a shot as this that killed old Simmonds. That was up in Kaffraria, where the storms are about as bad as anywhere. He and I were standing in the doorway watching the fun; I went in to light my pipe, and while I was fumbling about for the matches something knocked me clean over, and I heard a bang and a crash enough to wake the dead. At first I thought I had upset the crockery shelf on top of me; but no, there it stood; then my head felt queer, and there was a smell of burning about the place. Then I remembered, and got up and went to the door. There lay poor Simmonds, half in and half out, as dead as a log. The lightning had caught him bang on the head, burnt his coat and waistcoat to rags, and mauled him about horribly. I can tell you it wasn't a nice thing for a fellow to see, having just narrowly escaped the same luck himself--Ah!"

Again a sheet of flame darts down, and a roar and a crash as of the discharge of a dozen eighty-one-ton guns follows upon it. This time they beat a retreat indoors; and when they had a little recovered from the momentary shock, Armitage goes on.

"Well, as I was saying, poor Simmonds was so knocked about, that his early sepulture became a matter of necessity; besides, the first thing to do was to get him into the house. He was enormously heavy, and I couldn't get a Kafir on the place to give me a hand. Not for the cattle upon a thousand hills will they so much as touch anything that has been killed by lightning with the end of their little fingers, and the nearest neighbour was twenty miles off. However, I managed to lug the poor fellow in, and the next day we buried him."

"That's a cheerful old yarn of yours, Jack, and well calculated to rea.s.sure Miss Brathwaite," struck in Claverton.

"I believe he's only trying to frighten us," said Ethel.

"'Pon my word of honour, every word of what I told you's true,"

protested Armitage; and with that love for the horrific implanted in the human breast, one story led to another, and the storm raved and flashed without, and a few preliminary hailstones rattled at intervals upon the roof.

VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER TEN.

CAVEANT!

"Well, you'll have a fine day for your ride. Hicks, leave a buck or two up at Jim's in case I should be coming over. I suppose you'll all be back the day after to-morrow. Good-bye."

The speaker was Mr Brathwaite; the spoken to, an equestrian group of four, consisting of Claverton, Hicks, and the two girls, who were starting on a long-promised visit to Jim Brathwaite's place, where a bushbuck hunt was to be organised on the following day. It was the morning after the narrow escape of the luckless Allen from a watery demise--he and Armitage had returned home to fetch their guns, and were to rejoin the others at the farm of a certain Dutchman who abode half-way. The Naylors had gone on ahead in their trap, and the four equestrians were the last to start. And such a morning! The rain had cleared away, and the great deep vault overhead was unflecked by a single feathery cloud. The sun shot his golden darts from his amber wheel, and the outlines of the mountains slept in soft-toned relief beneath the liquid blue. A perfect day, with exhilaration in every breath of the fresh, healthy atmosphere, now cooled by the thunderstorm and rain of the previous evening. And the glorious freshness and radiant sunlight communicated itself to the spirits of the riders, as they cantered gaily along, chatting and laughing in thorough enjoyment of the unclouded present.

"Now, Mr Claverton," cried Ethel, as their horses bounded along over a smooth level stretch, "we'll have our race--I'm to have a hundred yards start, you know. Shall we begin?"

"On no account. I received strict injunctions from your aunt not to let you do anything rash, and I intend exerting my authority to the uttermost."

"Do you? Well now, why don't you say you're afraid of being beaten?

You are, you know. I'll tell you what. _You_ shall have the hundred yards start. We shall easily walk in before that lazy old 'Sticks,'

shan't we, Springbok, my beauty?" she said, banteringly, patting the neck of her steed, a light, elastic-stepping animal with blood and mettle in him, who arched his neck and shook his mane in response to the caress. She sat him to perfection, the little hand bearing ever so lightly on the reins; and in a habit fitting her like a glove, and a coquettish straw hat surrounded by a sweeping ostrich plume, beneath which the blue eyes danced and sparkled in sheer light-heartedness, she made as pretty a picture as ever one could wish to look upon. At any rate, so thought her companion.

"Well, Sticks is lazy--at times--I grant you; but there's method in his laziness. Don't abuse Sticks."

"Never mind, I know you're afraid. Don't think any more about it. Now I suppose you're dying to. You men always want to do a thing directly you're told not to."

What will be the upshot, by-the-bye, of this standing arrangement of quartette? This is not the first ride by any means that those four have taken together. Together! It has been shown that one of the party, at any rate, had reached the "two's company, three's a crowd" stage--or for the present purpose four. Thus it followed that however often the group may have started together, it was bound to split up before going very far. Frequently Hicks would manage to drop behind with one, and that one was not Ethel. Frequently, also, Ethel would, manoeuvre to rush ahead in a swinging gallop, in which case she could not be suffered to ride alone, but whoever undertook to superintend her on these occasions, certainly it was not Hicks. Whether she was wont to execute these manoeuvres at Laura's previous instigation, or whether her motives were less disinterested, deponent sayeth not. As for Claverton, he accepted the situation with, characteristic indifference. Yet what could be more fraught with elements of possible combustion? As for the man, he was perfectly unsusceptible, and wholly devoid of vanity. He looked upon his beautiful companion as a spoilt, pretty child, fond of teasing and chaff, and who amused him, and if he thought anything about himself in the matter, he supposed that he managed to amuse her. This is how he looked at it--but how did Ethel herself?

"Hallo! There goes a buck!" cried Claverton, suddenly. "May as well have a shot," and he made a movement to dismount.

"No, don't--please don't! Springbok won't stand fire, you know, and he'll bolt with me."

"Oh, all right. Then that lazy old Sticks has his good points after all?"

"Yes; a steady old arm-chair has its good points too. You can shoot from it," she replied, scornfully.

"What a wooden comparison! Why not say a clothes-horse?"

Bang! The report of a gun behind them. "Hicks to the fore," remarked Claverton, shading his eyes to watch the effect of the shot. But the buck held on its way, caring not a straw for the bullet which buried itself in the earth with a vicious thud some ten or a dozen yards behind.