"Good of me! I seem to remember that you would look forward to it--that last night I was here," I answered, a bit thrown off my balance by the manner of her greeting. That "welcome home," and the spontaneous heartiness of it, well it would be something to think about. "Well, and that is just what I have been doing," she answered gaily. "There! Now I hope you feel duly flattered." "I do indeed," I answered gravely. "And I am so glad we have met like this," she continued, "because now we shall be able to have a good long talk. The others are all more or less asleep, but I didn't feel lazy, so came down here to reduce that row of stiff euphorbia to paper. I have taken up my drawing again, and there are delightful little bits for water-colour all round here." The spot was as secluded and delightful as one could wish. The high bank and overhanging bushes gave ample shade, and opposite, with the scarlet blossoms of a Kafir bean for foreground, rose a small cliff, its brow fringed with the organ pipe stems of a line of euphorbia. "Lie down, Arlo," she enjoined. "What a fortunate thing it was you were able to recover him. I don't know how to thank you." "Of course you don't, because no question of thanking me comes in," I said. "I would sooner have found him as we did, than make anything at all out of the trip, believe me." "And your trip was not a great success after all, Falkner tells us?" "Oh we did well enough, though I have done better. But to return to Arlo. The mystery to me--to both of us--was how on earth he ever managed to let himself be stolen." "Ah. That dreadful witch doctor must have been at the bottom of it. I only know that one morning he--Arlo not Ukozi--had disappeared, and no inquiry of ours could get at the faintest trace of him. His disappearance, in fact, was as complete as that of that poor Mr Hensley." "Old Hensley hasn't turned up again, then?" I said. "No. Mr Kendrew is getting more and more easy in his mind. He's a shocking boy, you know, and says he's too honest to pretend to be sorry if he comes into a fine farm to end his days on," she said, with a little smile, that somehow seemed to cast something of a damper on the delight of the present situation. "Confound Kendrew," I thought to myself. "Who the deuce wants to talk of Kendrew now?" "Tell me, Mr Glanton," she went on, after a slight pause. "You got my letter I know, because Falkner has told us how he got the one mother wrote him. Did you think me very weak and foolish for allowing myself to get frightened as I did?" "You know I did not," I answered, with quite unnecessary vehemence. "Why I was only too proud and flattered that you should have consulted me at all. But, of course it was all somewhat mysterious. Is Ukozi about here now?"