"He did that, as it was the easiest way; but before he came the feeling grew in me that he was just behind watching me where I lay. I tell you, sonny, that long watch in the stillness of the dark, with a drop of water minute by minute falling into a little pool, and a sort of queer stirring noise among the trees, gave me the ague. But he came at last. It may have been three, or two o'clock; but without a sound he was there before me. My eyes had grown tired of watching those three dots of fire, and I'd been shutting them tight for a spell every now and again, and when I opened them the last time I saw the light was there, but altered. I looked away a second, then back, and there was three lights; but two of 'em were close together, and bigger. Jimminy! it was the ole man himself looking at me. I pulled the trigger, and the gun flew outer my hands. Then I rolled over and over, with a roaring, scuffling, and screaming in my ears as ef the gun had woke a whole crowd of devils and brought them howling outer the rocks. I rolled against a tree, and I was up it before I knew where I was, an' all the time there was that scuffling an' growlin' and awful screamin' going on down below. Bymby it got weaker and weaker, until it died off in gurglings and deep breathing, and by the grey light of the morning there was the two of 'em dead, the black tiger and the ole man baboon. The baboon had got his two long teeth in the big throat, and there he had held while the tiger with his hind claws raked the stomach clean out of him." "And where did your bullet strike?" "It struck the tree, and smashed the top firefly to smithereens. The other two had dropped off." "Then you didn't kill the tiger?" "I reckon I did; at any rate, I've got his skin and the skull of the ole baboon. He was the biggest tiger you ever see, and old as the hills, with his teeth worn down. I'm sorry for the baboon, but I'm glad he was there." I have reason to believe that Uncle Abe maligned himself for the sake of the yarn. On examining the tiger's skin subsequently, I found no traces of the baboon's teeth, but exactly between the eyes was a bullet-hole. The old man had held his gun straight in the dark kloof. CHAPTER SIXTEEN. WHERE THE QUAILS CAME FROM. In the spring the quails come in from the west, and one September morning I went out into the standing oat-crops with two other guns, each one of us attended by a little Kaffir lad to retrieve the birds. By noon we had traversed and re-traversed in line the upper lands and low lands, bagging 98 brace, and then in the glare of the mid-day we took shelter in the shade of a yellow-wood tree. There we argued the ever-recurring theme of the coming of the quail.