"They were that, and I set off to beat 'em. But look here, I said when I started talking, I was going to tell you how I trekked the Kosa chief, and here I been a' spinnin' on about another thing." "Did you get to the house first?" "What--me! I did that, sonny. I got there fust, an' there was nobody in--not a one though the pot was on the fire. I went off with the pot into a patch of mealies, and when the Kaffirs came up an' smashed things I were eatin' pap outer the pot, yes, that's so." "And did they find you?" I ventured after a long pause. "That pap were good, but it wanted salt--it did that. So long, sonny, so long," and the old man moved off to bed. CHAPTER TWENTY. TRACKING THE KOSA CHIEF. "I tole you all about it, and, what's more, I ain't got no time to jaw along when that shed o' mine wants mendin'," and Abe resolutely re-filled his pipe, unheeding my request for the completion of his last yarn. "Leave the shed alone. It will keep--besides, this is resting weather." "Sonny, listen to me. Restin' weather's been the ruin of this yer country. That so. When a man should span in and plough, when he should take the hoe and skoffel the lands, what does he do? Why up and say at the first touch of the warm wind, that it's restin' weather. I can't stand such laziness, and I ast you, sonny, where'd I been to-day, if I'd taken notice of the weather?" I glanced round at the neglected lands, at the solitary gum tree, at the old water barrel on its tree sledge, at the tumble-down shed, and shook my head, for there really was nothing to say. Old Abe followed my look, and then shoved himself back with his heels into a breadth of shade. "That's it, my lad," he said with a queer smile, "cast your eyes round and see what can be done by one man if his heart's in his work. Forty years agone this yer land were wilderness, and now look at it, with that there shed, them pumpkin lands, and this yer tree standin' up like the steeple of a church as a token of honest labour." "Wonderful!" I said. "That it are. I watched that old gum grow since it were no higher than my knee. I watered it an' tended it, an' measured it by the buttons on my shirt till it topped my head, and now, blow me, you could send a hull regiment with the band in the shadder of it." "I suppose you have seen regiments on the march?" "What, me? Well, now, I was tellin' you of that time I give the slip to the Kaffirs beyond Chumie and took hiding in the mealie field. Well, that time I came on a regiment in Pluto's Vale, when a Kaffir poked his assegai in the big drum, and the Colonel he give me a big knife for what I did." I said nothing about the shed or the resting weather, and Uncle Abe, sprawling in the shade, went on with his story.