She looked at him--still panting violently--shook her head, and smiled. She was physically incapable of speaking after her exertion. But even then a contrast rose vividly before her--this man now, and when she had last seen him. They had bidden him good-bye, she and her relative, in the front door of the hotel at Wynberg, cordially--and conventionally-- mutually expressing the wish to meet again soon up-country. Now, here he stood, having dropped, as it were, from the clouds, to come to her aid in her moment of sore need. And his appearance--haggard, unshaven, hatless, his clothes in tatters; yet it seemed to her sufficient at this moment that he was here at all. For some little while they sat in silence. Then he said-- "If you are sufficiently rested, tell me how it is you are here--in this place." "Oh yes; I can talk now. But--oh, what would I have done with that horrible fiend of an animal but for you? I should have been torn to pieces." "Strange, too, how it got here. I know the sort of beast. It in a kind of mongrel hyaena--Lupiswana, the natives call it. Ah! Now I begin to see." This as if a sudden idea had struck him. But again he repeated his request that she should tell him her experiences. And this she did-- from the murder of the Hollingworths right on. "And so you were coming to me for refuge?" he said, for she had made no secret of that part of it either. "It was well indeed you did not, for I only escaped through the fidelity of my own servant. I will tell you all about it another time. I must take care of you until we fall in with a patrol. We shall have to keep closely in hiding, you know. I am only a fugitive like yourself. The whole country is up in arms, but it is only a question of time and--" A bullet hummed over the speaker's head, very near, simultaneously with the crash of a firearm, discharged from the entrance of the enclosure, where a small lean native stood already inserting another cartridge in the breach of his smoking rifle. But John Ames was upon him with a tiger spring, just in time to strike up the barrel and send the bullet humming into space. "No, no! You don't go like that," he said in Sindabele, gripping the other's wrists. The savage, small and thin, was no match for the tall muscular white man; yet even he was less puny than he appeared and was striving for an opportunity to slide, eel-like, from that grasp, and make good his escape. "_Gahle, gahle_! or I will break your wrists." Then the native gave in, whining that Jonemi was his father, and he shot at him in mistake, seeing him in his kraal. He had retired there in peace, in order to keep out of all the trouble that was being made. "Yes; thou knowest me, and I know thee, Shiminya," was the answer. "In the mean time I will take thy rifle--which belongs to the Government-- and cartridges. That's it. Now, go and sit over there, and if thou movest I will shoot thee dead, for I can shoot better than thou."