‘_Ah!_’--and screaming aloud in superstitious horror, ‘The spirit of the Karroo! the spirit of the Karroo!’ he fell back heavily in a dead swoon.... Hopper’s horse, stumbling in the blackness against something soft lying athwart the narrow track, bent down his head and sniffed, then with a snort of terror and disgust wheeled round and vanished for the second time riderless into the night. * * * * * The breath that stirs over the Karroo before the first streak of dawn, straying into the heart of the great _Kopje_, stirred the soft down on the tips of Silverback’s ears, and played faintly with the beard on the dead man’s face. ‘The dawn is at hand, O Lord of the far-smelling nostrils and steel-like jaws, would it not be well to bite and sup, if but just a little, for surely this be dead also, he has not moved these two hours.’ ‘Try and see,’ snarled the jackal. The hyæna drew back his grizzled snout with a grunt of disgust and alarm. ‘The Mother of all hyænas forbid! _I_ touch a whole man, _fresh_, that also might yet be living! Nay, nay, but do thou, who knowest not fear, make trial and see if he be really good corpse, and no longer two-legged demon, and I will withdraw a while and keep good watch at the hinder end.’ ‘Coward!’ grumbled the jackal, watching him shrink to the outside of the _Kopje_. ‘But as for me,’ he grunted to himself, ‘the day is at hand, and my stomach calls loudly.’ Licking his long red gums, he stole forward from his lurking place in the crumbled sand, and set his white fangs in the fleshy part of Pietris’ leg, not omitting to beat a rapid retreat, in case of unexpected developments. The murderer’s death-like swoon was not proof against the meeting of those steel-like jaws. He groaned uneasily, and rolling round, raised himself stiffly and slowly to a sitting posture. ‘A thousand devils!’ he muttered, rubbing his leg, from which the blood flowed freely, ‘what fool’s game is this?’ Then his bewildered eyes in the fitful grey glimmer, that before the coming of the dawn forced itself into the recesses of the _Kopje_, fell on the upturned face of the Englishman. With a start Pietris sprang to his feet, recollection of the events and the horror of the night coming with a rush to his awakening mind. He staggered, then shrinkingly crept forward, and, bending over the body of his victim, looked long and fearfully into the glazed eyes. ‘It is gone!’ he muttered, ‘gone, gathered--and I--woe is me!--ruin and death--I have seen the harvest;--well, there is no more fear in that trash,’--he spurned the prostrate body,--‘except for this’--and stooping, with a great effort he wrenched the knife from the wound. He plunged it into the ground, and, wiping it carefully, replaced it in his belt. His eye in stooping caught the fresh spoor of Silverback and his companion.