Then the chief would say: `That is my speech,' and the Government would up and pat him on the back; an' when the farmers said the Kaffirs meant to fight, Government would tell 'em they was a passel of fools. Oh, I tell you, Government is vain as a boy in a new weskit, an' as easily humbugged. Well, about 1845 Government was laced up and smoothed down by the chiefs, with their tongues in their cheeks, and on a sudden the war smoke rose on the frontier." "The war smoke!" "Ay, bossie; the heaven-high columns of smoke going up blue and round in the still air, as a sign to the Kaffirs waiting silently in the bush and the kloofs. At the sign out they came, slipping from the bush paths stealthy as leopards on the trail, and one morning the hill-sides yonder were red, as though the aloes had blossomed." "What--with fire?" "Neh! karel with red clay smeared thick over the black faces, and with the red blankets carried by the bearers. Then there was in-spanning of horses, hurrying of women after their children, and the trail of dust about each flying cart. The red Kaffirs! Ay, lad! many a mother an' wife has gone white at times of peace at the sight of a Kaffir in his paint--squatting, maybe, like a tame dog at the back door, waiting for his women-folk in the kitchen to hand him out a bone--for in the smouldering eyes of him she can see the leaping flames of a burning homestead and assegais runnin' red, and if it's so in peace what must she feel when her roving eye, searching the veld for the little ones to bid them to breakfast, lights on the far-off streak on the border hills, and when her ear catches a murmur that is not from the sea--the murmur of fighting-men singing of death? The sun was level when it shone upon the red Kaffirs, and when the shadder was close up to my heels in the mid-day the country was empty of whites, except maybe a solitary cuss like me, hating to leave his home, and lurking in the bush close to his belongings." "And the cattle?"