Mr. Alston, Ernest, and Jeremy had taken a house in Pretoria, and for the past month or two had been living in it very comfortably. It was a pleasant one-storied house, with a verandah and a patch of flower-garden in front of it, in which grew a large gardenia-bush covered with hundreds of sweet-scented blooms, and many rose-trees, that in the divine climate of Pretoria flourish like thistles in our own. Beyond the flowers was a patch of vines, covered at this season of the year with enormous bunches of grapes, extending down to the line of waving willow-trees, interspersed with clumps of bamboo that grew along the edge of the sluit and kept the house private from the road. On the other side of the narrow path which led to the gate was a bed of melons, now rapidly coming to perfection. This garden was Ernest’s especial pride and occupation, and just then he was much troubled in his mind about the melons, which were getting scorched by the bright rays of the sun. To obviate this he had designed cunning frameworks of little willow twigs, which he stuck over the melons and covered with dry grass—“parasols” he called them. One morning—it was a particularly lovely morning—Ernest was standing after breakfast on this path, smoking, and directing Mazooku as to the erection of the “parasols” over his favourite melons. It was not a job at all suited to the capacity of the great Zulu, whose assegai, stuck in the ground behind him in the middle of a small bundle of knob-sticks, seemed a tool ominously unlike those used by gardeners of other lands. However, “needs must when the devil drives,” and there was the brawny fellow on his knees, puffing and blowing, and trying to fix the tuft of grass to Ernest’s satisfaction. “Mazooku, you lazy hound,” said the latter, at last, “if you don’t put that tuft right in two shakes, by the heaven you will never reach, I’ll break your head with your own kerrie!” “Ow, Inkoos,” replied the Zulu, sulkily, again trying to prop up the tuft, and muttering to himself meanwhile. “Do you catch what that fellow of yours is saying?” asked Mr. Alston. “He is saying that all Englishmen are mad, and that you are the maddest of the mad. He considers that nobody who was not a lunatic would bother his head with those ‘weeds that stink’ (flowers), or these fruits which, even if you succeed in growing them—and surely the things are bewitched, or they would grow without ‘hats’ (Ernest’s parasols)— must lie very cold on the stomach.” At that moment the particular “hat” which Mazooku was trying to arrange fell down again, whereupon the Zulu’s patience gave out, and, cursing it for a witch in the most vigorous language, he emphasised his words by bringing his fist straight down on the melon, smashing it to pieces. Whereupon Ernest made for him, and he vanished swiftly.