Nidia, for her part, was conscious of mingled feelings. She did not know whether to be glad or not that they had been summarily interrupted; on the whole, she thought she was glad. On the other hand, she had not exaggerated in saying she would miss him dreadfully, and already she had some idea as to how she would miss him. Here was a man who was outside her experience, who represented an entirely new phase of character. With her, too, this time that they had spent so much together stood forth. But although no more was said during their homeward ride of a nature to trench on grave matters, the tone between both of them was one that seemed unconsciously to breathe of confidence and rest. The deep murmur of the ocean swell had sunk its hoarse raving as it lapped the rocks below the skirting road; the golden glory of the heaving waters had turned to a deeper sapphire blue suffused with pink as the sun sank behind the rampart crags, and already two or three stars, twinkling forth, seemed to rest upon, then hover over, the rock crest of the great Lion Mountain, heaving up, a majestic sentinel, over the liquid plain. Yes; both were content, for in the hearts of both still rang the gladness and the quietude of a very conscious refrain:--"We shall meet again, soon." Thus the parting of the ways. But before they should meet again--what? In that surrounding of peace and evening calm, small wonder that no suggestion should find place as to a very different surrounding, where, far to the north, from the drear mountain wilderness, even at that moment, thundered forth--as another Voice from Sinai of old--a dire and terrible voice telling of scourge and of war--a voice, indeed, of woe and of wrath, sounding its dread tocsin o'er an entire land. "Burned is the earth, Gloom in the skies Nation's new birth--Manhood arise!" CHAPTER NINE. THE SCOURGE--AND AFTER. Madula's kraal, in the Sikumbutana, was again in a state of profound malcontentment and unrest, and again for much the same reason as before. Then that reason had been the imminent loss of its cattle, now that loss had become a certainty. The dread scourge had swept over the land, in all its dire unsparingness, and now Madula and his people were convened to witness the destruction of their worldly wealth. For the edict of the ruling power had gone forth. The animals were to be destroyed, and that wholesale. Segregated into small herds, they were carefully watched. With the first case of sickness becoming apparent the whole herd containing it was doomed. And now nearly the whole of Madula's herds had been declared infected.