George Bayfield had received him with a very warm welcome. He was a colonial man, and had never been out of his native land, yet contrasting them as they stood together it was Blachland who looked the harder and more weather-beaten of the two, so thorough an acclimatising process had his up-country wanderings proved. Bayfield was a man just the wrong side of fifty, and a widower. Two of his boys were away from home, and at that time his household consisted of a small son of eleven, and a daughter--of whom more anon. The kloof opened out into a wide open valley, covered mainly with rhenoster brush and a sprinkling of larger shrubs in clumps. From this valley on either side, opened lateral kloofs, similar to the one from which they had just emerged, kloofs dark with forest and tangled thickets, very nurseries for tiger and wild-dogs, Bayfield declared--but they had the compensating element of affording good sport whenever he wanted to go out and shoot a bushbuck or two--as in the present case. His boundary lines ran right along the high _rand_ which shut in the broad valley on either side, and the farm was an excellent one for sheep and ostriches. In fact the valley portion of it was a perfect network of wire fencing, and in their respective "camps" the great black bipeds stalked to and fro, uttering their truculent boom, or lazily picking at the aromatic grasses, which constituted their natural and aboriginal food. And the name of the place was Lannercost. "These confounded ostriches spoil half the shooting on the place, and, for the matter of that, anywhere," remarked Bayfield, as they ambled along through one of the large camps, where one exceptionally fierce bird hung about their flank, only kept from a nearer approach by the presence of the two dogs. "You flush a covey of partridges or a big troop of guinea-fowl, and away they go and squat in complete security under the wing of some particularly `kwai' bird in the next camp. It's beastly tantalising. Ever shot any wild ostriches up-country, Blachland?" "Yes, on two occasions--and I enjoyed it for that very reason. I was held up once on top of a rail for nearly two hours besieged on each side by an infuriated tame one. Had to wait until dark to get down. So you see it was a kind of poetic justice to turn the tables on the wild ones." "Rather. These are good game preservers though, in that they keep the niggers from killing the small bucks in the camps. Look at those few springbuck I'm trying to preserve. They'd all have been killed off if it wasn't for the `kwai' birds in the camp. By George! the sun'll be down before we get home. That isn't good for a man with fever still in his system at this time of year." "Oh, that's no matter. I'm a good deal too tough." "Don't you be so sure about that. We'd better push the nags on a bit."