About three hundred yards lower down in the valley I had left the attendant who usually accompanied me on my shooting expeditions. His name was Napoleon--a name given to him by the men on account of his being a native of St Helena, and from the fact of his bearing a supposed likeness to his illustrious namesake. He held in leash two half-bred Scotch deer-hounds, that were to be slipped on the report of my gun. They were fine, strong-limbed animals, capable of pulling down almost any big game. Napoleon himself was a bold, willing fellow, on whom I knew I could place entire reliance. He was as widely awake to a stray Kaffir as to game. I have seen him more than once, when bush-buck had been brought to bay, go in in the pluckiest manner, and, to save the dogs, often risk his own life. Bush-buck, I may mention, have fearfully pointed, spiral-shaped horns, and have been known to make fatal use of them when driven to desperation. Thus, far from all the world, I mutely sat, communing with the great voice of Nature around, and to the faint promptings of my small nature within. I felt and remained like a log, or rather, like the sober Irishman who entreated somebody to tread on the tail of his coat, if only for the sake of getting up a mild excitement. I was roused from this stupor by some visitors to the pool, in the shape of two little land-tortoises, that came wabbling down, one after the other, as fast as their small groggy legs would carry them. On arriving at the water’s edge, they launched forth, like boats from a slip, and floated about, side by side, as lovingly as the twin ship the Calais-Douvres on the Channel. They were, no doubt, a newly-married couple. It might even have been their marriage trip, as they seemed as much over head and ears in love as in water. There they were, turtling about at leap-frog, heads up and tails down, in rocking-horse fashion; and now and then, as though ashamed of such mad pranks, they would dive underneath the surface, and shyly begin playing bo-peep with one another among the sedges of the pond. But alas! all things must come to an end, and I have heard it said that even husbands and wives get tired of one another, though Hymen forbid that I should give credence to such a report! And now, at this moment, a huge bat came lazily flapping its wings, like a sea-gull, over the water, and warned, I presume, the innocent creatures that night was approaching, and that it was time for respectable couples to seek the security of their own homes. So they left their luxurious water-couch, and wabbled off, as demurely as Darby and Joan going to evening chapel.