"Oh, the horrid old wretch. That is a come down, Mr Driffield." "Yes, it sounds so, but it's a big word of _sibongo_, or praise, with them." "Oh well, then I must forgive him." "_Intandokazi_!" "What's that?" said Clare, but Driffield had cut short the old man's rigmarole and was talking to him about something else. He did not care to tell her that she was being hailed as his--Driffield's--principal--or rather best-loved--wife. Two white men, standing near, and who understood, turned away with a suppressed splutter. There was the usual request for tobacco, and then, Qubani glancing meaningly in the direction of the bar tent, remarked that he had travelled far, and that the white man made better _tywala_ than the Amandabeli, as, indeed, what could not the white men do. "A bottle of Bass won't hurt him," declared Driffield, sending across for it. "Why does he wear that great thick cap?" said Clare. "He'd look much better without it." "This?" said the old man, putting his hand to the cap of red knitted worsted, surmounted by a tuft, which adorned his head--as the remark was translated to him. "_Whau_! I am old and the nights are not warm." "Why, he's got on two," said Clare, as the movement, slightly displacing the red cap, showed another underneath made of like material but white. "Goodness! I wonder his head doesn't split." "Native heads don't split in a hurry, Miss Vidal," said Orwell, the Resident Magistrate, who had joined them in time to catch the remark. "I don't believe I ought to speak to you, Mr Orwell--at any rate not just yet. You had no business to win that tent-pegging. I had backed Mr Lamont." The Magistrate laughed. "Let me tell you, Miss Vidal, that you had backed the right man then. In fact it's inconceivable to me how he missed that last time, unless the sense of his awful responsibility made him nervous. It would have made me so." Again, many a true word uttered in jest. The speaker little knew that he had stated what was literally and exactly the case. "Nonsense. I wonder where Mr Lamont has got to. He hasn't been near me since." "That I can quite believe. He's afraid. I know I should be." "Nonsense again, Mr Orwell." And talking about other things they turned away, quite forgetting the old witch-doctor. There was one, however, who was not forgetting him--no, not by any means. The while Jim Steele, the latest rejected of Clare, was very drunk in the bar tent. When we say very drunk we don't mean to convey the idea that he was incapable, or even unsteady on his pins to any appreciable extent--but just nasty, quarrelsome, fighting drunk; and as he was a big, powerful fellow, most of those standing about were rather civil to him. Now Jim Steele was at bottom a good fellow rather than otherwise, but his rejection by Clare Vidal he had taken to heart. He had also taken to drink.