"Wonder when Peters will be back," ran on his reflections. "He said this evening. Peters is a most effectual antidote to the blues, and--By the way, there's nothing much for skoff. I'd better take a look round `the poultry yard.'" With a yawn he rose from the couch and stood upright. His erect, firmly-knit form was well set off by the prevailing costume of the country, namely, a light shirt, breeches and gaiters, and leather belt. He flung on the usual broad-brimmed cowboy hat, and, taking a gun and a handful of cartridges, stood in the doorway for a moment, looking forth. The glare of the hot hours was already toning off into that exquisitely soft and mellow light, where afternoon merges into the African evening. He looked forth upon an expanse of park-like country, rolling away from his very door. Three or four great granite kopjes rose farther on, and, beyond these, a dark line, extending as far as the eye could reach, marked the margin of a vast forest tract. Taking a few steps forward he turned. Here an entirely different scene was before his gaze. Behind the rude house of plaster and thatch, from which he had just emerged, was a large circular enclosure, stockaded with mopani poles and thorny mimosa boughs, while another and smaller stockade, similarly constructed, enclosed several conical huts. He had laughed at his native servants when they had urged the necessity of building such a stockade. Lions? Hyenas? Why, no wild animal would venture inside a hut. Look at his own house. It was not stockaded. To which they had replied in true native fashion that that might be so. The _Inkosi_ was a very great and powerful white man, but they were only poor helpless black men; and, moreover, that wild animals _had_ been known to take people out of their huts. So he had laughed and let them have their way. Such was Piers Lamont's pioneer farm in Matabeleland. It had been granted him by reason of his services during the war of occupation in '93, and he had sold it--for a song--when he wanted a run home. He had bought it back--very much on the same terms--a few months previously, on his return to the old up-country life. "Ho, Zingela!" he called. "_Nkose_!" and a young native appeared from the enclosure containing the conical huts. He was tall and slim, and straight as a dart, and had a pleasing face. "Come with me," said Lamont, speaking the Sindabele very fairly; "I am going down to the river bank to collect a few birds for the pot. You shall carry them." "_Nkose_!" sung out the boy with great heartiness. The South African native is a born sportsman, and if there is a service congenial to him it is the participation, even vicariously, in any form of sport.