Chapter Thirty Nine.
From the Dead!
Eustace and the overseer were sitting on the stoep smoking a final pipe together before going to bed. It was getting on for midnight and, save these two, the household had long since retired.
Tempted by the beauty of the night they sat, well wrapped up, for it was winter. But the whole firmament was ablaze with stars, and the broad nebulous path of the Milky Way shone forth like the phosphoric trail in the wake of a steamer. The conversation between the two had turned upon the fate of Tom Carhayes.
“I suppose we shall soon know now what his end really was,” the overseer was saying. “Kafirs are as close as death over matters of that kind while the war is actually going on. But they are sure to talk afterwards, and some of them are bound to know.”
“Yes. And but for this administration business it might be just as well for us not to know,” answered Eustace. “Depend upon it, whatever it is, it will be something more than ghastly, poor fellow. Tom made a great mistake in going to settle in Kafirland at all. He’d have done much better here.”
“I suppose there isn’t the faintest shadow of a chance that he may still be alive, Mr Milne?”
The remark was an unfortunate one. Cool-headed as he was, it awoke in Eustace a vague stirring of uneasiness – chiming in, as it did, with the misgivings which would sometimes pass through his own mind.
“Not a shadow of a chance, I should say,” he replied, after a slight pause.
Bentley, too, began to realise that the remark was not a happy one – for of course he could not all this time have been blind to the state of affairs. He felt confused and relapsed into silence – puffing vigorously at his pipe.
The silence was broken – broken in a startling manner. A terrified scream fell upon their ears – not very loud, but breathing unmistakable tones of mortal fear. Both men sprang to their feet.
“Heavens!” cried the overseer. “That’s Mrs Carhayes – ”
But the other said not a word. In about a half a dozen steps he was through the sitting room and had gained the door which opened out of it. This was Eanswyth’s bedroom, whence the terrified cry had proceeded.
“What is wrong, Eanswyth?” he cried, tapping at the door.
It opened immediately. She stood there wrapped in a long loose dressing gown, the wealth of her splendid hair falling in masses. But her face was white as death, and the large eyes were dilated with such a pitiable expression of fear and distress, as he certainly had never beheld there.
“What is it, my darling? What has frightened you so?” he said tenderly, moved to the core by this extraordinary manifestation of pitiable terror.
She gave a quick flurried look over her shoulder. Then clutching his hands – and he noticed that hers were trembling and as cold as ice – she gasped:
“Eustace – I have seen – him!”
“Who – in Heaven’s name?”
“Tom.”
“Darling, you must have dreamt it. You have been allowing your thoughts to run too much on the subject and – ”
“No. It was no dream. I have not even been to bed yet,” she interrupted, speaking hurriedly. “I was sitting there, at the table, reading one of my little books. I just happened to look up and – O Eustace” – with a violent shudder – “I saw his face staring in at the window just as plainly as I can see you now.”
Eustace followed her cowering glance. The window, black and uncurtained, looked out upon the veldt. There were shutters, but they were hardly ever closed. His first thought, having dismissed the nightmare theory, was that some loafer was hanging about, and seeing the lighted window had climbed up to look in. He said as much.
“No. It was him,” she interrupted decisively. “There was no mistaking him. If it were the last word I breathed I should still say so. What does it mean? Oh, what does it mean?” she repeated in tones of the utmost distress.
“Hush, hush, my dearest! Remember, Bentley will hear, and – ”
“There he is again!”
The words broke forth in a shriek. Quickly Eustace glanced at the window. The squares of glass, black against the outer night, showed nothing in the shape of a human countenance. A large moth buzzed against them, and that was all.
Her terror was so genuine, as with blanched face and starting eyes she glared upon the black glass, that ever so slight a thrill of superstitious dread shot through him in spite of himself.
“Quick!” she gasped. “Quick! Go and look all round the house! I am not frightened to remain alone. Mr Bentley will stay with me. Go, quick!”
The overseer, who had judiciously kept in the background, now came forward.
“Certainly, Mrs Carhayes. Better come into this room and sit down for a bit. Why, you must have been mistaken,” he went on, cheerily placing a chair at the sitting room fire, and kicking up the nearly dead logs. “Nobody could get up at your window. Why, its about fifteen feet from the ground and there’s nothing lying about for them to step on. Not even a monkey could climb up there – though – wait. I did hear once of a case where a baboon, a wild one out of the veldt, climbed up on to the roof of a house and swung himself right into a room. I don’t say I believe it, though. It’s a little too much of a Dutchman’s yarn to be readily swallowed.”
Thus the good-natured fellow rambled on, intent on cheering her up and diverting her thoughts. The rooms occupied by himself and his family were at the other end of the house and opened outside on the stoep, hence the sound of her terrified shriek had not reached them.
Eustace, on investigation intent, had slipped round the outside of the house with the stealth and rapidity of a savage. But, as he had expected, there was no sign of the presence of any living thing. He put his ear to the ground and listened long and intently. Not a sound. No stealthy footfall broke the silence of the night.
But as he crouched there in the darkness, with every nerve, every faculty at the highest tension, a horrible thought came upon him. What if Carhayes had really escaped – was really alive? Why should he not avow himself openly – why come prowling around like a midnight assassin? And then the answer suggested itself. Might it not be that his mind, unhinged by the experiences of his captivity, was filled with the one idea – to exact a deadly vengeance upon the wife who had so soon forgotten him? Such things had been, and to this man, watching there in the darkness, the idea was horrible enough.
Stay! There was one way of placing the matter beyond all doubt. He remembered that the soil beneath Eanswyth’s window was loose dust – a trifle scratched about by the fowls, but would give forth the print of a human foot with almost the distinctness of snow.
Quickly he moved to the spot. Striking a wax vesta, and then another, he peered eagerly at the ground. The atmosphere was quite still, and the matches flamed like a torch. His heart beat and his pulses quickened as he carefully examined the ground – then a feeling of intense relief came upon him. There was no sign of a human footprint.
No living thing could have stood under that window, much less climbed up to it, without leaving its traces. There were no traces; ergo, no living thing had been there, and he did not believe in ghosts. The whole affair had been a hallucination on the part of Eanswyth. This was bad, in that it seemed to point to a weak state of health or an overloaded mind. But it was nothing like so bad as the awful misfortune involved by the reality would have been – at any rate, to him.
He did not believe in ghosts, but the idea crossed his mind that so far as from allaying Eanswyth’s fears, the utter impossibility of any living being having approached her window without leaving spoor in the sandy, impressionable soil, would have rather the opposite tendency. Once the idea got firmly rooted in her mind that the dead had appeared to her there was no foreseeing the limits of the gravity of the results. And she had been rather depressed of late. Very anxiously he re-entered the house to report the utter futility of his search.
“At all events we’ll soon make it impossible for you to get another schrek in the same way, Mrs Carhayes,” said the overseer cheerily. “We’ll fasten the shutters up.”
It was long before the distressed, scared look faded from her eyes. “Eustace,” she said – Bentley having judiciously left them together for a while – “When you were – when I thought you dead – I wearied Heaven with prayers to allow me one glimpse of you again. I had no fear then, but now – O God! it is his spirit that I have seen.”
He tried to soothe her, to reassure her, and in a measure succeeded. At last, to the surprise of himself and the overseer, she seemed to shake off her terror as suddenly as it had assailed her. She was very foolish, she declared. She would go to bed now, and not keep them up all night in that selfish manner. And she actually did – refusing all offers on the part of Eustace or the overseer to remain in the sitting room in order to be within call, or to patrol around the house for the rest of the night.
“No,” she said, “I am ashamed of myself already. The shutters are fastened up and I shall keep plenty of light burning. I feel quite safe now.”
It was late next morning when Eanswyth appeared. Thoroughly refreshed by a long, sound sleep, she had quite forgotten her fears. Only as darkness drew on again a restless uneasiness came over her, but again she seemed to throw it off with an effort. She seemed to have the faculty of pulling herself together by an effort of will – even as she had done that night beside the broken-down buggy, while listening for the approaching footsteps of their savage enemies in the darkness. To Eustace’s relief, however, nothing occurred to revive her uneasiness.
But he himself, in his turn, was destined to receive a rude shock.
Chapter Forty.
A Letter from Hoste
There was no postal delivery at Swaanepoel’s Hoek, nor was there any regular day for sending for the mails. If anybody was driving or riding into Somerset East on business or pleasure, they would call at the post office and bring out whatever there was; or, if anything of greater or less importance was expected, a native servant would be despatched with a note to the postmaster.
Bentley had just returned from the township, bringing with him a batch of letters. Several fell to Eustace’s share, all, more or less, of a business nature. All, save one – and before he opened this he recognised Hoste’s handwriting:
My Dear Milne (it began): This is going to be an important communication. So, before you go any further, you had better get into some sequestered corner by yourself to read it, for it’s going to knock you out of time some, or I’m a Dutchman.
“That’s a shrewd idea on the part of Hoste putting in that caution,” he said to himself. “I should never have credited the chap with so much gumption.”
He was alone in the shearing-house when the overseer had handed him his letters. His coat was off, and he was doing one or two odd carpentering jobs. The time was about midday. Nobody was likely to interrupt him here.
Something has come to my knowledge (went on the letter) which you, of all men, ought to be the one to investigate. To come to the point, there is some reason to suppose that poor Tom Carhayes may still be alive.
You remember that Kafir on whose behalf you interfered when Jackson and a lot of fellows were giving him beans? He is my informant. He began by inquiring for you, and when I told him you were far away, and not likely to be up here again, he seemed disappointed, and said he wanted to do you a good turn for standing his friend on that occasion. He said he now knew who you were, and thought he could tell you something you would like to know.
Well, I told him he had better unburden himself to me, and if his information seemed likely to be of use, he might depend upon me passing it on to you. This, at first, he didn’t seem to see – you know what a suspicious dog our black brother habitually is – and took himself off. But the secret seemed to weigh upon him, for, in a day or two, he turned up again, and then, in the course of a good deal of “dark talking,” he gave me to understand that Tom Carhayes was still alive; and, in fact, he knew where he was.
Milne, you may just bet your boots I felt knocked all out of time. I hadn’t the least suspicion what the fellow was driving at, at first. Thought he was going to let out that he knew where old Kreli was hiding, or Hlangani, perhaps. So, you see, you must come up here at once, and look into the matter. I’ve arranged to send word to Xalasa – that’s the fellow’s name – to meet us at Anta’s Kloof directly you arrive.
Don’t lose any time. Start the moment you get this. Of course I’ve kept the thing as dark as pitch; but there’s no knowing when an affair of this kind may not leak out and get into all the papers.
Kind regards to Mrs Carhayes – and keep this from her at present.
Yours ever, Percy F. Hoste.
Carefully Eustace read through every word of this communication; then, beginning again, he read it through a second time.
“This requires some thinking out,” he said to himself. Then taking up the letter he went out in search of some retired spot where it would be absolutely impossible that he should be interrupted.
Wandering mechanically he found himself on the very spot where they had investigated the silver box together. That would do. No one would think of looking for him there.
He took out the letter and again studied every word of it carefully. There was no getting behind its contents: they were too plain in their fatal simplicity. And there was an inherent probability about the potentiality hinted at. He would certainly start at once to investigate the affair. Better to know the worst at any rate. And then how heartily he cursed the Kafir’s obtrusive gratitude, wishing a thousand-fold that he had left that sable bird of ill-omen at the mercy of his chastisers. However, if there was any truth in the story, it was bound to have come to light sooner or later in any case – perhaps better now, before the mischief wrought was irreparable. But if it should turn out to be true – what then? Good-bye to this beautiful and idyllic dream in which they two had been living during all these months past. Good-bye to a life’s happiness: to the bright golden vista they had been gazing into together. Why had he not closed with Hlangani’s hideous proposal long ago? Was it too late even now?
The man suffered agonies as he sat there, realising his shattered hopes – the fair and priceless structure of his life’s happiness levelled to the earth like a house of cards. Like Lucifer fallen from Paradise he felt ready for anything.
Great was Eanswyth’s consternation and astonishment when he announced the necessity of making a start that afternoon.
“The time will soon pass,” he said. “It is a horrible nuisance, darling, but there is no help for it. The thing is too important. The fact is, something has come to light – something which may settle that delayed administration business at once.”
It might, indeed, but in a way very different to that which he intended to convey. But she was satisfied.
“Do not remain away from me a moment longer than you can help, Eustace, my life!” she had whispered to him during the last farewell, she having walked a few hundred yards with him in order to see the last of him. “Remember, I shall only exist – not live – during these next few days. This is the first time you have been away from me since – since that awful time.”
Then had come the sweet, clinging, agonising tenderness of parting. Eanswyth, having watched him out of sight, returned slowly to the house, while he, starting upon his strange venture, was thinking in the bitterness of his soul how – when – they would meet again. His heart was heavy with a sense of coming evil, and as he rode along his thoughts would recur again and again to the apparition which had so terrified Eanswyth a few nights ago. Was it the product of a hallucination on her part after all, or was it the manifestation of some strange and dual phase of Nature, warning of the ill that was to come? He felt almost inclined to admit the latter.
Chapter Forty One.
Xalasa’s Revelation
“You ought to consider yourself uncommonly fortunate, Milne,” said Hoste, as the two men drew near Anta’s Kloof. “You are the only one of the lot of us not burnt out.”
“That’s a good deal thanks to Josane,” replied Eustace, as the house came into sight. “He thought he could manage to save it. I didn’t. But he was right.”
“Ha-ha! I believe the old scamp has been enjoying himself all this time with the rebels. I dare say he has been helping to do the faggot trick.”
“Quite likely.”
Hoste eyed his companion with a curious glance. The latter had been rather laconic during their ride; otherwise he seemed to show no very great interest one way or another in the object of it. Yet there was reason for believing that if Xalasa’s tale should prove true it would make every difference to the whole of Eustace Milne’s future life.
The sun was just setting as they reached Anta’s Kloof. The Kafir had stipulated that they should meet him at night. He did not want to incur potential pains and penalties at the hands of his compatriots as an “informer” if he could possibly help it. The house, as Hoste had said, was the only one in the whole neighbourhood which had escaped the torch, but that was all that could be said, for it was completely gutted. Everything portable had been carried off, if likely to prove of any use to the marauders, what was not likely so to prove being smashed or otherwise destroyed. Windows were broken and doors hung loose on their hinges; in fact, the place was a perfect wreck. Still it was something that the fabric would not need rebuilding.
Hardly had they off-saddled their horses, and, knee-haltering them close, turned them out to graze around the house, than the night fell.
“Xalasa should be here by now,” remarked Hoste, rather anxiously. “Unless he has thought better of it. I always expected we should learn something more about poor Tom when the war was over. Kafirs will talk. Not that I ever expected to hear that he was alive, poor chap – if he is, that’s to say. But what had been the actual method of his death: that was bound to leak out sooner or later.”
Eustace made no reply. The remark irritated him, if only that his companion had made it, in one form or another, at least half a dozen times already. Then the sound of a light footstep was heard, and a tall, dark figure stood before them in the gloom, with a muttered salutation.
“Greeting, Xalasa!” said Eustace, handing the new arrival a large piece of Boer tobacco. “We will smoke while we talk. The taste of the fragrant plant is to conversation even as the oil unto the axles of a heavily laden waggon.”
The Kafir promptly filled his pipe. The two white men did likewise.
“Have you been in the war, Xalasa?” went on Eustace, when the pipes were in full blast. “You need not be afraid of saying anything to us. We are not Government people.”
“Au!” said the Gaika, with a quizzical grin upon his massive countenance. “I am a ‘loyal,’ Ixeshane.”
“The chiefs of the Ama Ngqika, Sandili and the rest of them, have acted like children,” replied Eustace, with apparent irrelevance. “They have allowed themselves to be dragged into war at the ‘word’ of Kreli, and against the advice of their real friends, and where are they now? In prison, with a lot of thieves and common criminals, threatened with the death of a dog!”
The Kafir uttered an emphatic murmur of assent. Hoste, who was excusably wondering what the deuce the recent bad behaviour, and eventual fate of Sandili and Co., had to do with that of Tom Carhayes, could hardly restrain his impatience. But Eustace knew what he was about. The Briton may, as he delights to boast, prefer plain and straightforward talking in matters of importance – or he may not. The savage, of whatever race or clime, unequivocally does not. He dearly loves what we should call beating around the bush. However important the subject under discussion, it must be led up to. To dash straight at the point is not his way. So after some further talk on the prospects and politics of the Gaika nation, and of the Amaxosa race in general – past, present, and to come – Eustace went on:
“You were not always a ‘loyal,’ Xalasa?”
“Whau!” cried the man, bringing his hand to his mouth, in expressive native fashion. “When the fire trumpet first sounded in the midnight sky, I answered its call. While the chiefs of the Ama Ngqika yet sat still, many of their children went forth to war at the ‘word’ of the Paramount Chief. Many of us crossed into the Gcaléka country and fought at the side of our brethren. Many of us did not return. Hau!”
“Then you became a ‘loyal’?”
“Ihuvumenté (The Government) was very strong. We could not stand against it. Ha! Amasoja—Amapolisi—bonké. (Soldiers – police – all) I thought of all the men who had crossed the Kei with me. I thought of the few who had returned. Then I thought, ‘Art thou a fool, Xalasa? Is thy father’s son an ox that he should give himself to be slain to make strength for Sarili’s fighting men?’ Hau! I came home again and resolved to ‘sit still.’”
“But your eyes and ears were open among the Ama-Gcaléka. They saw – they heard of my brother, Umlilwane?”
“Thy brother, Umlilwane, was alive at the time the white Amagcagca (Rabble) knocked me down and kicked me. He is alive still.”
“How do you know he is alive still?” said Eustace, mastering his voice with an effort, for his pulses were beating like a hammer as he hung upon the other’s reply. It came – cool, impassive, confident:
“The people talk.”
“Where is he, Xalasa?”
“Listen, Ixeshane,” said the Kafir, glancing around and sinking his voice to an awed whisper. “Where is he! Au! Kwa ’Zinyoka.”
“Kwa ’Zinyoka! ‘The Home of the Serpents!’” Well he remembered the jeering, but ominous, words of the hideous witch-doctress at the time his unfortunate cousin was being dragged away insensible under the directions of his implacable foe, Hlangani. “He will wake. But he will never be seen again.” And now this man’s testimony seemed to bear out her words.
“What is this ‘Home of the Serpents,’ Xalasa?” he said.
“Au!” returned the Kafir, after a thoughtful pause, and speaking in a low and apprehensive tone as a timid person in a haunted room might talk of ghosts. “It is a fearsome place. None who go there ever return – none – no, not one,” he added, shaking his head. “But they say your magic is great, Ixeshane. It may be that you will find your brother alive. The war is nearly over now, but the war leaves every man poor. I have lost all I possessed. When you find your brother you will perhaps think Xalàsa is a poor man, and I have too many cattle in my kraal. I will send four or five cows to the man who told me my brother was alive.”
In his heart of hearts Eustace thought how willingly he would send him a hundred for precisely the opposite intelligence.
“Where is ‘The Home of the Serpents’?” he said.
“Where? Who knows? None save Ngcenika, who talks with the spirits. None save Hlangani, who rejoices in his revenge as he sees his enemy there, even the man who struck him, and drew the blood of the Great Chief’s herald. Who knows? Not I. Those who go there never return,” he added impressively, conveying the idea that in his particular instance “ignorance is bliss.”
Eustace’s first instinct was one of relief. If no one knew where the place was, clearly no one could tell. Then it struck him that this rather tended to complicate matters than to simplify them. There had been quite enough insinuated as to himself, and though guiltless as to his cousin’s fate, yet once it got wind that the unfortunate man was probably alive somewhere, it would devolve upon himself to leave no stone unturned until that probability should become a certainty. Public opinion would demand that much, and he knew the world far too well to make the blunder of treating public opinion, in a matter of this kind, as a negligeable quantity.
“But if you don’t know where the place is, Xalasa, how am I to find it?” he said at length. “I would give much to the man who would guide me to it. Think! Is there no man you know of who could do so?”
But the Kafir shook his head. “There is none!” he said. “None save Ngcenika. Whau, Ixeshane! Is not thy magic as powerful as hers? Will it not aid thee to find it? Now I must go. Where the ‘Home of the Serpents’ is, thy brother is there. That is all I can tell thee.”
He spoke hurriedly now and in an altered tone – even as a man who has said too much and is not free from misgiving as to the consequences. He seemed anxious to depart, and seeing that nothing more was to be got out of him for the present, the two made no objection.
Hardly had he departed than Josane appeared. He had noted the arrival of Xalasa, though Xalasa was under the impression that he was many miles distant. He had waited until the amakosi (Literally “chiefs.” In this connection “masters”) had finished their indaba (Talk) and here he was. He was filled with delight at the sight of Ixeshane and his eyes felt good. His “father” and his “friend” had been away for many moons, but now he was back again and the night was lighter than the day. His “father” could see, too, how he had kept his trust, the old man went on. Where were the houses of all the other white amakosi! Heaps of ashes. The house of his “father” alone was standing – it alone the torch had passed by. As for the destruction which had taken place within it, that could not be prevented. The people “saw red.” It had taxed the utmost effort of himself and Ncanduku to preserve the house. Reft of hyperbole, his narrative was plain enough. A marauding band had made a descent upon the place on the very night they had quitted it, and, although with difficulty dissuaded from burning it down, the savages had wrecked the furniture and looted the stores, as we have shown. This, however, was comparatively a small evil.
Hoste, wearied with all this talk, which moreover he understood but imperfectly, had waxed restive and strolled away. No sooner was he out of earshot than Josane, sinking his voice, remarked suddenly:
“Xalasa is a fool!”
Eustace merely assented. He saw that something was coming, and prepared to listen attentively.
“Do you want to find Umlilwane?” went on the old Kafir with ever so slight an expression on the “want.”
“Of course I do,” was the unhesitating reply. But for the space of half a minute the white man and the savage gazed fixedly into each other’s faces in the starlight.
“Au! If I had known that!” muttered Josane in a disappointed tone. “If I had known that, I could have told you all that Xalasa has —could have told you many moons ago.”
“You knew it, then?”
“Yes.”
“And is it true – that – that he is alive now?”
“Yes.”
“But, Josane, how is it you kept your knowledge to yourself? He might have been rescued all this time. Now it may be too late.”
“Whau, Ixeshane! Did you want him rescued?” said the old fellow shrewdly. “Did the Inkosikazi want him rescued?”
This was putting matters with uncomfortable plainness. Eustace reddened in the darkness.
“Whatever we ‘wanted,’ or did not want, is nothing,” he answered. “This is a matter of life and death. He must be rescued.”
“As you will,” was the reply in a tone which implied that in the speaker’s opinion the white man was a lunatic. And from his point of view such was really the case. The old savage was, in fact, following out a thoroughly virtuous line of conduct according to his lights. All this while, in order to benefit the man he liked, he had coolly and deliberately been sacrificing the man he – well, did not like.
“Where is ‘The Home of the Serpents,’ Josane? Do you know?”
“Yes. I know?”
Eustace started.
“Can you guide me to it?” he said, speaking quickly.
“I can. But it is a frightful place. The bravest white man would take to his heels and run like a hunted buck before he had gone far inside. You have extraordinary nerve, Ixeshane – but – You will see.”
This sounded promising. But the old man’s tone was quiet and confident. He was not given to vapouring.
“How do you know where to find this place, Josane?” said Eustace, half incredulously in spite of himself. “Xalasa told us it was unknown to everybody – everybody but the witch-doctress?”
“Xalasa was right. I know where it is, because I have seen it. I was condemned to it.”
“By Ngcenika?”
“By Ngcenika. But my revenge is coming – my sure revenge is coming,” muttered the old Gcaléka, crooning the words in a kind of ferocious refrain – like that of a war-song.
As this juncture they were rejoined by Hoste.
“Well, Milne,” he said. “Had enough indaba? Because, if so, we may as well trek home again. Seems to me we’ve had a lot of trouble for nothing and been made mortal fools of down to the ground by that schelm, Xalasa’s, cock-and-bull yarns.”
“You’re wrong this time,” replied Eustace. “Just listen here a while and you’ll see that we’re thoroughly on the right scent.”
At the end of half an hour the Kafir and the two white men arose. Their plans were laid. The following evening – at sundown – was the time fixed on as that for starting upon their perilous and somewhat dimly mysterious mission.
“You are sure three of us will be enough, Josane?” said Hoste.
“Quite enough. There are still bands of the Gcaléka fighting men in the forest country. If we go in a strong party they will discover us and we shall have to fight —Au! ‘A fight is as the air we breathe,’ you will say, Amakosi,” parenthesised the old Kafir, whimsically – “But it will not help us to find ‘The Home of the Serpents.’ Still, there would be no harm in having one more in the party.”
“Who can we get?” mused Hoste. “There’s George Payne; but he’s away down in the Colony – Grahamstown, I believe. It would take him days to get here and even then he might cry off. I have it; Shelton’s the man, and I think he’ll go, too. Depend upon it, Milne, Shelton’s the very man. He’s on his farm now – living in a Kafir hut, seeing after the rebuilding of his old house. We’ll look him up this very night; we can get there in a couple of hours.”