"He had better mind," said Denham. "You ought to have taken away those bits of vanity before he went into action." "What bits of vanity?" I said. "Those white ostrich-feathers. They make him stand out so clear to a shooter. Ah! he's down." Just then Joeboy was seen to drop forward right out of sight. "No," I said; "that was one of his jumps;" and I spoke confidently, for I had often seen him make goat-like leaps when we had been out shooting among the hills. "You're wrong," said my companion confidently. "Poor fellow! let's get level with the place where he tumbled. I'm sure that was a fall." "Wait a few minutes," I said, "and you'll see him perhaps a hundred yards farther on." I proved to be quite right, for we soon saw Joeboy climbing steadily on just as I had said, and he kept on getting higher and higher till we were up to the spot where I had passed so unpleasant a night. "My word, you did have a bad time of it! Why, if you had gone over there it would have killed this beautiful little horse of yours." "Then I shouldn't have found the Light Horse," I said quietly; but I couldn't help feeling a bit of a shiver as I gazed at the depth below where we had stopped. After that, as we rode on, keeping a good lookout, I began to ask a few questions about the war which had so suddenly broken out and come like a surprise upon us at our quiet and retired home. "Oh," said my companion, "it is only what many people expected. The Boers have never been satisfied about being under England. Plenty of them are sensible enough, and think that the proper thing to do is to attend to their farms and grazing cattle; but there are a set of discontented idiots among them who have stirred them up with a lot of political matter, telling them they are slaves of England's tyrannical rule, and that it is time to strike for their freedom, till they have believed that they are ill-treated. So now they have risen, and say that they are going to drive all the Rooineks, as they call us English, into the sea, quite forgetting that if we had not helped them the savage tribes around them would have overrun their country and turned them out." "Will they drive us into the sea?" I asked. "What do you think?" said Denham, with a laugh. "Do you think we are the sort of people to let a party of rough farmers turn us out of Natal, just because they have been stirred up to fight by a gang of political adventurers? Is your father going to give up his farm that he has spent years of his life in making out of the wilderness?" "What?" I cried angrily. "No! I should think not." "Well, that's bringing it home to you, my lad. I said your father's farm. His is only one instance." "It isn't as if we wanted to turn the Boers out," I said.