That too, did not afflict them, and they discussed Paysandu tongue in that rough-and-ready veldt shanty with an appetite not always present at the most dainty and glittering of snowy tables. Then after a brief rest the mules were inspanned again. "Going to outspan at Skrine's?" said Langrishe, as, having settled up, they bade him good-bye. "Don't know," answered Wyndham; "I'd like to get on to the Kezane." "You can't. It's too far and too hot. You'll bust them mules." "Oh well, I'll see how they get on. So long, Langrishe, we'll look in on the way back." Poor Langrishe! he was a rough pioneer in a rough country, but a good fellow enough according to his lights. Little they thought, that gay and light-hearted party, as they bade him good-bye--little he thought himself--that not merely his days, but his hours were numbered--and that not even two figures would be needed to write the number of them; for one of the awful features of that ghastly rising was that it whirled down upon its victims as a veritable bolt from the blue. And its victims were scattered, singly or by twos and threes, throughout the length and breadth of the land. Craftily Wyndham had manoeuvred that Clare should share the front seat with him. She could see the country better, he declared, and if there was more sun there was more air than in the back seat. Clare herself was nothing loth, and moreover the move met with Fullerton's approval. That sybaritic engineer, feeling genial after a plain but plentiful lunch and two or three long whiskies-and-sodas, felt likewise a little drowsy; and the back seat was more comfortable for the purpose of forty winks. Wyndham was actuated by another motive. He was proud of his driving and he wanted the girl to witness and appreciate it. And she did, and said so, thereby raising Wyndham to the seventh heaven of delighted complacency. More than once he stole a glance of admiration at the beautiful, animated face beside him. The heat, and a modicum of dust, seemed to affect her not one whit. Poor Lucy Fullerton in the back seat, not less drowsy than her proprietor, was looking a trifle red and puffy from the effects of both, but Clare, in her fresh and cool attire and straw hat, was as fresh and cool and smiling as though heat and dust did not exist. She did not even want to put up a sunshade, that most abominable of nuisances on the part of the sharer of your driving seat, what time your way lies over none too smooth roads, and through an occasional stony and slippery drift. And they chatted and joked merrily and light-heartedly as they sped over the sunlit landscape with its variety of towering granite kopje near by and hazy line of distant ridge far away against the deep blue of heaven's vault, what time both Fullertons snored placidly behind, one discordantly, the other lightly.