The other filled and lighted his pipe. "Well, the fact is, I've had a lot to do of late," he replied at length, between sundry vigorous puffs.

"And then, you see, I'm a rough sort of feller and haven't got any company manners, and now you've got company. Perhaps, after all, I'm best here."

"You surly old humbug," said Payne, with a laugh, "I never heard such bosh. You come up on Sunday at latest, or we shall quarrel. Call yourself a neighbour, indeed! Now you'll come, won't you?"

"I'll try."

"All right, that's settled. Ta-ta;" and mounting his horse Payne rode off.

Gradually the long smooth slopes became steeper, falling off into abrupt ravines, affording a glimpse of the Great Kei, which glided along, far down between its lofty banks--now winding round a smooth-headed knoll, now straightening as it washed the base of some huge wall of rock--a distant musical murmur being upborne upon the still air as it rushed over a stony shallow. From the far plains beyond, many a blue column of smoke rose into the sunshine, where dotted about lay the cl.u.s.tering kraals of the savage Gcalekas, whose hordes, even then, were gathering for the long-expected and somewhat dreaded inroad upon the peace of the colony. A bird sang in the thick thorn-protected brake adjoining the path, a white vulture or two soared lazily from one of the huge krantzes overhanging the river, insects hummed in the sunlight, and it seemed as if nothing but the savagery of man could avail to break the peaceful calm of that glorious scene, amid which Payne pursued his way wrapped in uneasy thought; for in spite of his sceptical tone when talking to Marshall he felt by no means the a.s.surance that he would have had that worthy believe.

His horse suddenly p.r.i.c.ked up its ears as the sound of deep voices immediately in front became audible, and in a moment three tall, savage-looking Kafirs, their athletic bodies smeared from head to foot with red ochre, advanced down the path at a run, swinging their kerries.

Now the said path was, just there, only wide enough for a single horseman, being shut in on either side by high thorn-bushes, and Payne naturally expected the pedestrians to make way for him. They, however, had no such intention, and his steed began to show signs of terror at the sudden appearance of the brawny, ochre-smeared barbarians, with their gleaming necklaces of jackal's teeth rattling as they advanced.

"Out of the way, you vagabonds," shouted Payne, angrily. "Out of the road; d'you hear?" and he raised his whip menacingly.

"Aow! Out of the way yourself, _umlungu_!" [white man] insolently replied the foremost Kafir in his great deep tones, at the same time seizing the bridle and trying to jerk the horse's head round. "We won't get out of the way for you."

Payne's whip descended, the lash curling with an angry "swish" round the naked body of the speaker.

"Take that, you hound!" he cried. "And now let go." And he clubbed his whip to strike with the heavy loaded end.

"Haoo-ow! Hah!" roared the savage, dropping the bridle and stepping back a pace or two, while the lurid lightnings of wild-beast wrath shot from his eyes. Then he sprang at Payne like a tiger-cat, aiming a sledge-hammer blow at him with his heavy stick.

Fortunately for Payne he managed to throw up his arm in time to save his head, or he would have fallen to the ground, brained by the terrific force of the blow. Fortunately, too, for him, his adversaries carried no a.s.segais, or he would there and then have been stabbed through and through and his body flung over the adjacent cliff into the Kei, for he need expect no mercy from such foes. The land was almost in a state of war, and brutal outrages of this kind were only too terribly common. He made a furious blow at his opponent with the b.u.t.t of his whip, but ineffectively, for at the moment of striking he felt himself seized by a powerful hand and dragged from his horse, which backed into the bushes terrified and snorting. Then nearly stunned by the fall he lay upon the ground, and the sky and earth and foliage all went round in one giddy, sickening whirl, and still he could see the gigantic figure of the savage, who, with glaring eyes and white gleaming teeth, was advancing upon him with kerrie upraised to strike, and he lay there, powerless even to avoid the blow. In a second it would fall, when--woof!

something descended through the air, a large dark object darted between him and the sky, and his enemy fell heavily to the earth. He heard the clash of kerries in strike and parry, a fierce imprecation, and the ring of a pistol-shot; then he knew no more till he awoke to consciousness with some one bending over him and fanning his brow.

"Don't move," said the stranger. "Take it easy a little longer, and then you'll feel better."

Payne looked wonderingly at the dark sun-browned face bent over him, with the calm, resolute, blue-grey eyes and clear-cut features, and it seemed to him that he had seen the owner of it before.

"Oh, I feel all right now," he said, raising himself upon one elbow and then sitting up. "A little muddled, you know, that's all."

"I venture to say that our friend here, feels 'a little muddled,'"

remarked the other, pushing with his foot the form of a prostrate Kafir.

Payne stood up, rather giddily, and recognised his a.s.sailant in the inert, motionless ma.s.s.

"I say, though, but the brute isn't dead?" he said, with just a tinge of concern, bending over the fallen savage.

"He isn't dead. A stirrup-iron properly handled is a grand weapon; but Kafir skulls are notoriously thick. The chances are a hundred to one, though, that yours would have been split at this moment, had that individual carried out his amiable little programme just then."

"Of course--I was forgetting. You saved my life. Why, what an ungracious dog you must think me!"

"And I could have dropped the other two so nicely in their tracks,"

continued the stranger, as if he had not heard Payne's remark. "They both came at me with their kerries; but directly they saw this,"-- producing a revolver--"off they went. I wanted to fell another chap, so I didn't trot out the barker at first, till they began to think they had it all their own way, and pressed me so hard that I was obliged to.

Lord, how they streaked it off!"

"But you did let drive, didn't you? At least, I thought I heard a shot."

"Yes, I did. Couldn't resist the temptation; but just at the moment it flashed across me how infernally near civilisation we were, and it's a ticklish moment just now. The authorities would think nothing of running us in and making scapegoats of us, swearing we had brought on the war, you know, or something of that sort. So I just blazed over the fellow's head, to give him a bit of a scare, otherwise I could have dropped the pair of them--oh, so sweetly! But how did it all happen?"

Payne told him.

"H'm," said the other, reflectively. "We could run this fellow over to the gaol if that would be any satisfaction to you, and if you cared to go through the bother. But then, unfortunately, you struck the first blow, as you couldn't have helped doing--and the result would have been the same in any case--and the chances are some pettifogging attorney, or meddling missionary, would take up the scoundrel's case and turn the tables on you. So that's out of the question."

"Shall we bring him to?" asked Payne.

"A few slashes of your whip would do it if you're anxious on his account; if not, let him lie."

"Poor devil, he seems to be in bad order," said Payne, inspecting his late foe, who lay with the crown of his head cut and bleeding, exactly as he had fallen beneath the blow of the stirrup-iron, and breathing heavily. "I'll take his kerries as a trophy, anyhow." Moved by a sudden impulse, he glanced narrowly at the stranger, a man of apparently about his own age, or not far from it; and it still seemed to him that the dark, handsome face, and determined eyes, no less than the rather mournful ring in the quiet voice, were familiar to him.

"Well, then, we'll be moving," continued Payne. "My place isn't far from here, and of course you are going with me. Don't say no, for I insist upon it."

There came an amused gleam into the other's eyes, and he stroked his long, brown moustache once or twice to conceal a smile. "There's no need to insist," he said, "because it so happens that that was my original intention. The first thing I meant to ask you, when you came round, was the way to George Payne's; but it would be rather superfluous to ask it of George Payne himself, wouldn't it?"

"What! Why, good heavens! Who the deuce are you? We've met before somewhere, I'll swear!" said Payne, looking at him in a puzzled manner.

The other broke into one of his long, quiet laughs, as if hugely enjoying the situation, as he steadily returned the puzzled, inquiring gaze. "Don't you remember that refreshing row close to De Klerk--that time you were coming from the gold fields? Hang it, it wasn't much more than two years ago!" Payne burst forth into a mighty expletive--a thing he very rarely did. "My dear fellow, this is a piece of luck! And I never recognised you! But you were bearded like the pard then, you know; and, another thing--my head must have been spinning round, for I felt an awful whack. Of course. So it is! Why, I ought to have recognised you by the neat-handed way in which you dropped that n.i.g.g.e.r, if by nothing else! That's the second time you saved my hide," and he seized the hand extended to him, in a mighty grip.

"Well, these n.i.g.g.e.rs were tougher customers than those four swaggering Dutchmen, when all's said and done. I haven't been in a good honest row for a long while. It does one good."

Mounting their horses they moved off, taking a farewell glance at the place where the fallen savage still lay at full length, though he began to show signs of returning consciousness. And the still sunshine glowed in all its former calmness, as though no fierce and deadly struggle had just occurred to mar its peace.

VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER TWO.

RALPH TRUSCOTT'S QUEST.

On the same day that these events are occurring on the far Kaffrarian border, two men are seated together in a dingy office just out of Chancery Lane. One is a solicitor, evidently the presiding genius of the place--a man with a high, bald forehead, iron-grey hair, and a keen, intellectual face; the other is a tall, dark, military-looking man, faultlessly attired, who sits impatiently tapping his boots with his cane while he listens to the lawyer in a half-incredulous and wholly discontented frame of mind, which betrays itself only too plainly in his eyes. A striking-looking man, in age about five-and-thirty; but there is an unmistakable air of dissipation, not to say excess, about the lines of the handsome face--the air of one who had lived too hard and too fast, and would be prematurely old. And a superciliousness about the mouth which the short black moustache did not conceal, and a cold, unscrupulous look in the eyes, would effectually prevent the face from ever being a pleasing one.

Ralph Truscott, late Captain in Her Majesty's --th Foot, was a firm believer in the adage, "All's fair in love and war"--in the former half of it literally, as more than one rather shady episode in his gallant career might serve to show, were it known, which it was not, even within his intimate circle; in the latter half as representing the multifold 'cute devices whereby he had staved off and otherwise evaded the just or unjust demands of a swarm of importunate creditors, Jew and Gentile. In a word, the man was a born spendthrift; and having run through one large fortune, and a second smaller one, in an incredibly short s.p.a.ce of time, found himself compelled to sell, and had been living upon his wits and high play ever since. Not that he had degenerated into a mere card-room sharper--far from it--but he was noted as a man with an extraordinary run of luck; and though some held significantly aloof from him in connection with the card-table or the billiard-room, yet, on the whole, he had not lost caste. Of course it had occurred to him that he might retrieve his fallen fortunes by picking up an heiress. It ought not to be difficult, for he was just the sort of individual who, gifted with a striking exterior and unlimited a.s.surance, might carry things pretty much as he pleased among the society women of his--or of any--set. But this course was open to two objections. One lay in his own inner consciousness, which made him fully aware that in three years, at the outside, he would inevitably have run through the lady's fortune, in which case he would find himself again dest.i.tute, and saddled with a wife to boot; the other, in the fact that though heiresses themselves might be soft of heart and compliant of head, their parents or guardians were not. Indeed, some of these, in the obduracy of their stony hearts, had been known to veto the transaction forthwith; while others, after a few private inquiries into the circ.u.mstances and antecedents of this enterprising individual, had briefly refused to entertain any of his proposals, and had carried off their charges out of harm's way. So, Captain Ralph, repeatedly thwarted in his schemes of advancement, was compelled perforce to abandon them. He consoled himself, however, with the thought that after all it was better to be a free man, even if living was somewhat precarious, and gave up laying siege to the fair s.e.x, with an eye to the main chance. But meanwhile his liabilities decreased not, and at the time the reader has the honour of making his acquaintance, he was, to use his own expression, "at his last kick" for want of the needful.

Such was the man who now sat in the inner office of Messrs. Grantham and Grantham, solicitors, in close confabulation with the senior partner.

"Then you can give me no more positive information?" he was saying.

"I'm sorry to say we can't," replied the lawyer. "The young lady left England more than four years ago--went to the Cape, I believe, as governess or companion, or something or other in that line. Since then we have heard nothing of her."

"Do you think she is out there still?"

"My dear sir, it is impossible for us to say. I repeat that it was more than four years ago, and that we have not heard one word of her since."

"Well, I am surprised that you, of all people, should be so blankly ignorant of her whereabouts, considering that it might be necessary to communi--" He checked himself hurriedly, seeing that he had let out too much. "I mean--that her friends might be making inquiries after her."

The faintest possible smile lurked round the corners of the lawyer's mouth. He fancied that the other had let down his guard in that incautious speech into which vexation had betrayed him. And it was even so.