Desirous of personal conference with the Dutch agent at the station in the Stormberg, he had no mind to be attended in such expeditions by Gray; yet he knew well that without some counter-charm, the deserter, on being left to himself, would at once appeal, through the missionaries, to the mercy of the British Government. True, there was the oath which had bound the three traders together in solemn compact, but paramount to all other considerations was Gray's horror of his own treachery and disloyalty as a soldier. However desirous he might be of keeping the compact, as regarded Brennard and Lee, inviolate, the issue of Gray's surrender would be keen inquiry, and consequently a fatal result to the chief convict's schemes. Like a good man's neglected garden, the surface of the young deserter's character presented a wilderness of weeds and briars, but below were seeds long sown, some dead, but some struggling, with every capability of fruition, when the soil should fall under the hand of the labourer. All considerations, Lee felt, would vanish before the wish to retrieve the past, to become, in Gray's own words, "an honest man again." Evening time in Kafirland! The sun has all day long been glowing on the river, lighting it up like burnished steel; the trees motionless, the birds on listless wing, screening themselves within the shady boughs. Now the mountain peaks are blending their purple summits with a crimson sky, and the last rays of light deck the clouds in the west as with a glory! Lo! it fades, and the heavens are veiled with a mantle of pale grey; the stream begins to murmur, responsive to the breeze that stirs its waters; the birds congregate in the balmy air before seeking their rest; the countless herds more slowly homeward, panting for the refreshment of cool water brooks; and the women, some singly, some in parties in single file, trip across the plains to draw water, as is their custom at eventide. The picture reminds one of what one reads of in the patriarchal days. Lee and Gray sat upon a bank that sloped to the river, a tributary of the Great Kei--would you had a map, dear reader, to trace the country I would fain describe. Peals of laughter stirred the air. Beneath the over-arching boughs a crowd of dusky Nereides were taking their evening bath, swimming, diving, pulling each other in sport below the surface of the stream, swinging from branch to branch with amazing activity and grace, and tossing up fountains of spray on the elder women, who stood silently filling their calabashes at the clear pools between the stones at the drift. "Amayeka, Amayeka, izapa, izapa (come hither)," cried two or three of the younger girls, as Amayeka, apparently unconscious of the gathering below, and with slow step, vacant air, and pitcher on her head, moved along the opposite bank, followed by her little attendant, a tiny meercat, which I have hitherto forgotten to mention.