The latter I was not destined to learn—at any rate not then. The dogs, which had been lying behind the house, uttering an occasional sleepy growl when the moaning, scuffling cattle became too noisy, now leaped up and charged wildly forward, uttering such a clamour as to have been heard for miles.
“Here they are, you see. I told you they’d be home directly,” I said. “And here they are.”
But the intense relief which momentarily had lighted up Beryl’s face faded, giving way to a look of deepened anxiety and disappointment.
“It is not them at all,” she murmured. “Listen!”
By the sound of their barking, the dogs must have gained the further gate. The clamour had ceased—suddenly, mysteriously. Yet, listening intently, we could detect no sound of voices nor yet of hoof strokes, both of which would have been audible a mile or more away in the calm stillness of the night. Yet, from an occasional “woof” or so, which they could not restrain, we could hear that the dogs were returning.
But their tumult broke forth again, though partially and momentarily. Someone was opening the inner gate.
An exclamation escaped Beryl, low, but intense. A dark figure came towards us.
“Why, it is Dumela!” she gasped.
“Inkosikazi,” began the old Kafir, whom we all thought considerably more than a hundred miles away at that moment, if we had thought of him at all, that is. “Inkosikazi. Where is your father? I would speak with him, now at once.”
“He is not here, Dumela. He will be, any moment, though.”