Elandsbergen boasted of one hostelry, dignified by the title of the Royal Hotel, where 'civil entertainment for man and beast' was promised by the landlord, 'Josh Jarrett.' It was a somewhat substantial edifice of two storeys, built of baked brick, square in form, with a flat roof composed of strong lattice-work, covered with half-bricks and with clayey mortar to render it impervious to the torrents of the South African rainy season. In some of the windows were glass panes; in others sheepskin with the wool off, which, in consequence of extreme tension, attains a certain transparency. Giving his horse to a Kaffir ostler, whose sole raiment was a waistcoat made of a sleeveless regimental tunic, Florian somewhat wearily entered the 'hotel,' the proprietor of which started and changed colour at the sight of his red coat, as well he might, for, though disguised by a bushy beard, sedulously cultivated, and a shock head of hair under his broad-leaved hat, he was one of the many deserters from our troops, already referred to, and, though apparently anxious to appear civil, was secretly a ruffian of the worst kind. The room into which he ushered Florian was bare-walled, the furniture was of the plainest and rudest kind, and the floor was formed of cow-dung over wet clay, all kneaded, trodden, and hardened till it could be polished, a process learned from the Zulus in the construction of their kraals. A fly-blown map of Cape Colony, a cheap portrait of Sir Bartle Frere, and the skull of an eland with its spiral horns were the only decorations of the apartment, and the literature of 'the day' was represented by three tattered copies of the _Cape Argus_, _Natal Mercury_, and the _Boer Volksteem_. Josh Jarrett was dressed like a Boer, and in person was quite as dirty as a Boer; his loose cracker-trousers were girt by a broad belt with a square buckle, whereat hung a leopard-skin pouch and an ugly hunting-knife with a cross hilt. In the band of his broad hat were stuck a large meerschaum pipe and the tattered remnant of an ostrich feather. The Kaffir ostler now came hurriedly in, and announced something in his own language to the landlord, who, turning abruptly to Florian, said-- 'You are in something of a fix, Sergeant!' 'How--what do you mean?' demanded Florian. 'That your horse is dying.' 'Dying!' 'Yes, of the regular horse-sickness.' Florian in no small anxiety and excitement hurried out to the stable, in which two other nags were stalled, and there he saw the poor animal he had ridden lying among the straw in strong convulsions, labouring under that curse of South Africa, the horse-sickness, a most mysterious disorder, which had suddenly attacked it.