"Everything that precaution can do is against it. They are carefully supervised; in fact, it is my own particular business to supervise a considerable section of them." "Really? But how do you talk, to them? Can they talk English?" John Ames smiled. "You forget I mentioned that I was raised in Natal." "Of course. How stupid I am!" declared Nidia. "And so you know their language and have to look after them? Isn't it very exciting?" "No; deplorably prosaic. There are points of interest about the work, though." "And you keep them in order, and know all that's going on?" "We try to; and I think on the whole we succeed fairly well." But at that very moment Shiminya the sorcerer was dooming to death two persons, and filling with seditious venom the minds of three chiefs of importance within the speaker's district. CHAPTER SIX. ABOUT SOME DALLYING. John Ames was beginning to enjoy his leave, and that actively. At first he had done so in a negative kind of way. It was pleasant to have nothing to do, and plenty of time to do it in, to rise in the morning and know that until bedtime at night he had only to please himself and take no thought for anything whatever. He had a few acquaintance in the neighbourhood, more or less busy people whose avocations kept them in Cape Town throughout the working day, and so was mostly thrown upon his own resources. This, however, was not without its advantages, for the change had hardly benefited him much as yet, and he was conscious of a sort of mental languor which rendered him rather disinclined than otherwise for the society of his fellows. He liked to mount his bicycle and spin for miles along the smooth level roads, beneath the oak and fir shade, the towering wall of mountain glimpsed ever and anon athwart the trees; or, gaining the nearest point of sea shore, lie on the beach for hours, watching the rollers come tumbling in, and the revels of bathers skipping amid the surf. Hitherto he had been content to do all this alone, now he was not; and the name of the agency which had effected this change was Nidia Commerell. Nearly a fortnight has gone by since we introduced that entrancing personality to the reader's notice; and whatever effects the same had had upon John Ames, one at any rate was certain, viz. a conviction that it was not good to be alone.