Nightfall was near at hand, when the party approached the Basuto kraal; and the boys looked eagerly round them to see if they could discover any marked differences between it and the other native villages which they had visited. Ella, as she had called herself, had hardly spoken a word during the whole journey. A sudden shyness apparently having seized her, which was a curious contrast to the self-possession of her demeanour when she first encountered them. To the questions addressed to her by Frank and Nick, she made very brief and seemingly reluctant replies, and they soon discontinued their inquiries. But their curiosity was only heightened by the lady's unwillingness to satisfy it. It appeared that De Walden had heard something of a white Basuto Queen; but whence she came, or how she had attained to her kingdom, was a sealed mystery. Perhaps she might be one of an English colony, which had established itself in these parts, and assumed a sovereignty over all the inhabitants round about But if so, it was strange that none of them should have heard from the Bechuanas, and especially from Kobo, anything about such a colony. Well, at all events, a very short stay in the village would suffice to explain the mystery; probably, indeed, the first sight of it would be sufficient. But this did not prove to be the case. The kraal was not very unlike those of the Bechuanas, and other neighbouring tribes. The houses were constructed of wicker-work plaited with reed, and had the usual arched entrance, which served as door, window, and chimney. There were the baskets and pails, the assegais, and bows and arrows, which usually stood in front of a Kaffir hut, or were hung against the central pole. The population, too, which had assembled, one and all, to witness the entry of the strangers, did not materially differ from the other inhabitants of the district. The whole kraal, to be sure, had the appearance of having been constructed in haste, and only partially finished; but otherwise, our adventurers would hardly have known that they had entered the country of a new people. As soon as they had entered the enclosure, Ella called up one of the natives, to whom she gave some orders in a tone that was not audible, and then, turning to her companions with a graceful bend of the head, she vanished into one of the neighbouring houses. The Basuto to whom she had spoken, now stepped up to the Englishmen and invited them, by a gesture of the hand, to follow him. They obeyed, and presently found themselves in a room which showed, for the first time, a real contrast to ordinary savage life. It was a _room_, not the inside of a hut--a room perhaps fourteen feet square, hastily constructed of trees squared by the axe, and planks nailed horizontally to them, but a room, nevertheless, with ceiling, unglazed windows and doors, and carpeted with Kaffir matting. There were even some rude chairs and a table in the centre. Their guide