"I'll be even with them. I will, by the living Jingo!" he snarled as he sat sipping his brandy and water--while Eanswyth, still pale and agitated from the various and stirring events of the night, bathed his wounds with rather trembling fingers. "I'll ride into Komgha to-morrow and have the whole lot arrested--especially that lying dog, Nteya. I'll go with the police myself, if only to see the old scoundrel handcuffed and hauled off to the _tronk_." "What on earth induced you to run your head into such a hornet's nest for the sake of a few sheep?" said Eustace at last, thinking he ought to say something. "Hang it, man!" was the impatient retort. "Do you suppose I was going to let these scoundrels have the laugh of me? I tell you I spoored the sheep slap into Nteya's kraal." "Well, they seem to have the laugh of you now, anyhow--of _us_, rather," said Eustace drily, as he turned away. CHAPTER NINE. A STARTLING SURPRISE. Nature is rarely sympathetic. The day dawned, fair and lovely, upon the night of terror and brooding peril. A few golden rays, darting horizontally upon the green, undulating slopes of the pleasant Kaffrarian landscape--then the sun shot up from the eastern skyline. Before him the white mist, which had settled down upon the land a couple of hours before dawn, now rolled back in ragged folds, leaving a sheeny carpet of silver dew--a glittering sparkle of diamond drops upon tree and shrub. Bird voices were twittering into life, in many a gladsome and varying note. Little meer-kats, startled by the tread of the horse, sat upon their haunches to listen, ere plunging, with a frisk and a scamper, into the safety of their burrows. A tortoise, his neck distended and motionless, his bright eye dilated with alarm, noiselessly shrank into the armour-plated safety of his shell, just in time to avoid probable decapitation from the falling hoof which sent his protective shell rolling half a dozen yards down the slope. But he now riding abroad thus early, had little attention to give to any such trivial sights and sounds. His mind was fully occupied.