The old man, still chuckling, went out of the room and returned with a long bamboo whip-stick, deprived, however, of the twenty-foot thong made from buffalo hide. "What's become of the thong?" I cried. "That's it. It's on account of the missin' thong that I'm telling you o' this remarkable cirkumst'nce. There's a clump o' trees 'long side the path 'way over yonder, where the wood were stacked, an' the thong flew off in the dusk o' the evening thereabouts. You see there were a stick fas', and when I lammed into the oxen that ere thong flew off-- whizz!--whang!--into the dark o' the trees. I lay the stick down an' searched fer it up an' down, in an' out--the oxen standin' there knockin' their horns, an' the stars poppin' out. Well, I guv it up, an' picked up the stick, an' the thong came through my fingers." "You said the thong flew off." "So it did; but there it were fast on the stick--long, smooth, round, an' taperin' off inter a fine lash, as thick about the middle as my little finger, an' as tough as steel." "I know it. You couldn't match that thong in the Colony. But where is it?" "That's what I'm tellin' yer about. The thong flew off--whizz!-- whang!--but when I picked the stick up, there it were. I jes' stood there ponderin' over the strangeness o' this, when a breath o' wind come up the valley with a sigh on it--one o' those quiverin', mysterious, solumnelly sounds that makes you look over yer shoulder an' start at a shadder. `Hambaka--trek,' I cried, an' whirling the whip around, touched up the fore-leaders, then brought the forslag down on the achter ox. I told you them oxen had stuck fas'. Well! at the touch o' the whip they jes' laid their shoulders agin the yokes, an', with a low groan, they yanked the wagon up that stiff bit--up an' up, without a pause, to the level veld. I tell you, sonny, I never seed oxen lay themselves down like that span." "Where does the kindness come in?" "Hole on. The tortoise gets to the end o' his journey same as the hare, only samer. On the level I called to the oxen to whoa!--whoa!--whoa!-- and, arter a time they whoa'd, tho' somehow 'twas ag'inst their will. They were that active they could have trotted home--they could so. I lay down that whip an' filled my pipe." "Yes?" "Then I took the stick up, an' the thong were gone agin." "What!" "Clean gone, sonny! Clean gone!" "Did it fly off?" "No, sonny; it crawled off." "Crawled off?" "That there thong were a whip-snake. It jes' gripped on ter the bamboo with its jaws to help me outer that stick fas', an' when we got to the level it unhitched. It knew as well as I did the oxen didn't want any more whip when the flat were reached, and it unhitched." "Uncle Abe Pike! Do you expect me to believe that?"