It has been remarked in the Cape Colony that a change has come over the habits of the lion on the borders of civilization. In the interior, where he roams free and unmolested, his loud roar is heard at nightfall and in the early dawn reverberating among the hills; but where guns are in use and traders' waggon-wheels are heard--perhaps the distant shriek of a railway engine--he seems to have learned the lesson that his own safety, and even his chances of food, lie in silence. Over a grassy country, tufted here and there by mimosa-trees and prickly Euphorbia bushes, Florian, without other food than the green mealies of which he had had a repast on the previous day, marched manfully on westward, in the hope of somewhere striking on the Buffalo River, and getting on the border of Natal, for there alone would he be in safety. But he had barely proceeded four miles or so, when he came suddenly upon three Zulus driving some cattle along a grassy hollow, and a united shout escaped them as they perceived him. Two were armed with rifles, and one carried a sheaf of assegais. The two former began to handle their rifles, which were muzzle-loaders; but, quick as lightning, Florian dropped on his right knee, planting on the left his left elbow, and sighting his rifle at seven hundred yards, in good Hythe fashion, knocked over the first, and then the second ere he could reload; for both had fired at him, but as they were no doubt ignorant of the use of the back-sight, their shot had gone he knew not where. One was killed outright; the other was rolling about in agony, beating the earth with his hands, and tearing up tufts of grass in his futile efforts to stand upright. The third, with the assegais, instead of possessing himself of the fallen men's arms and ammunition to continue the combat, terrified perhaps to see both shot down so rapidly, and at such a great distance, fled with the speed of a hare in the direction of that hornets' nest, the military kraal. To permit him to escape and reach that place in safety would only, Florian knew, too probably destroy his chances of reaching the frontier, so he took from his knee a quiet pot-shot at the savage, who fell prone on his face, and with a quickened pace Florian continued his progress westward. Compunction he had none. He only thought of his own desperate and lonely condition, of those who had perished at Isandhlwana, of poor Bob Edgehill and his song-- 'Merrily, lads, so ho!' the chorus of which he had led when the 'trooper' came steaming out of Plymouth harbour.