Yes, the better part of his life was now behind him, with its ideals, its possibilities, its finer impulses. Carrying his bitter introspect within the physical domain, had he not become rough and weather-beaten and lined and seamed and puckered? It did not strike him as odd that he should be indulging in such analysis at all--yet had he let anybody else, say any of his present comrades, into the fact that he was doing so, they would have deemed him mad, for if there was a man with that expedition who was envied by most of his said comrades as the embodiment of cool, sound daring, combined with astute judgment, of rare physical vigour and striking exterior, assuredly that man was Hilary Blachland. Yet as it was, he regarded himself with entire dissatisfaction and disgust, and the medium through which he so regarded himself was named Lyn Bayfield. Her memory was ever before him; more, her presence. Asleep or awake, in the thick of the hardest toil and privation of the campaign, even in the midst of the discharge of his most important and responsible duties yet never to their detriment, the sweet, pure, lovely fairness of her face was there. He had come to worship it with a kind of superstitious adoration as though in truth the presence of it constituted a kind of guardian angel. Was he, after all, in love with Lyn? He supposed that not a man or woman alive, knowing the symptoms, but would pronounce such to be the case, even as one woman had done. But he knew better, knew himself better. The association of anything so gross, so earthly, here, he recoiled from as from an outrage. It was the unalloyed adoration of a strange, a holy and a purifying influence. In love with her? He, Hilary Blachland, at his time of life, and with his experience of life, in love! Why, the idea was preposterous, grotesque. He recalled the time he had spent beneath the same roof with her, and the daily association. It would be treasured, revered to the utmost limit of his life, as a sacred and an elevating period, but--as an influence, not a passion. He had exchanged correspondence with Bayfield more than once since leaving, and had received two or three letters from Lyn--expressing-- well, simply Lyn. He had answered them, and treasured them secretly as the most priceless of his possessions. From Bayfield he had learned that the disturbing element had refrained from further molestation, and had moreover, taken her own departure from the neighbourhood almost immediately, a piece of intelligence which afforded him indeed the liveliest gratification. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ As they drew near to their objective, other kraals near and around Bulawayo itself, were seen to be on fire. But no sign of their recent occupants. For all trace remaining of the latter, the whole Matabele nation might have vanished into thin air.