"I fancy that there is about the same proportion of open land. I have only once been up the river higher than this, but if I remember right there is a sort of low bluff rising forty or fifty feet above the river which would form a capital site for a hut." "I will set about the work of exploration this afternoon," Mr. Atherton said, "and if the next lot is anything like this I shall be very well contented to settle down upon it for a bit. I have always had a fancy for a sort of Robinson Crusoe life, and I think I can get it here, tempered by the change of an occasional visit to our friends when I get tired of my own company." The men had by this time brought up the basket of provisions, and the two girls were spreading a cloth on the grass in the shade of a tree at a short distance from the hut, for all agreed that they would rather take their lunch there than in the abode so lately tenanted by young Langston. After the meal was over the party mounted their horses and rode back. One of the natives who had come up from the boat remained with Mr. Atherton, the others started back in the boat, as Mr. Atherton declared himself to be perfectly capable of making the journey on foot when he had finished his explorations. He returned two days later, and said he was quite satisfied with the proposed site for his hut and with the ground and forest. "I regard myself as only a temporary inhabitant," he said, "and shall be well content if, when I am ready for another move, I can get as much for the ground as I gave for it. In that way I shall have lived rent free and shall have had my enjoyment for nothing, and, I have no doubt, a pleasant time to look back upon." "Do you never mean to settle down, Mr. Atherton?" Mrs. Mitford asked. [Illustration: WILFRID AND THE GRIMSTONES FIND IT HARD WORK _Page 197_] "In the dim future I may do so," he replied. "I have been wandering ever since I left college, some fifteen years ago. I return to London periodically, spend a few weeks and occasionally a few months there, enjoy the comforts of good living and club-life for a bit; then the wandering fit seizes me and I am off again. Nature altogether made a mistake in my case. I ought to have been a thin wiry sort of man, and in that case I have no doubt I should have distinguished myself as an African explorer or something of that sort. Unfortunately she placed my restless spirit in an almost immovable frame of flesh, and the consequence is the circle of my wandering is to a certain extent limited." "You make yourself out to be much stouter than you are, Mr. Atherton. Of course you are stout, but not altogether out of proportion to your height and width of shoulders. I think you put it on a good deal as an excuse for laziness."