“Got him just under Bromvogel Nek—eh, Dick?” said Greenoak.
“Yes. But—how did you know?”
“Heard your shot, and the dogs on to something wounded. We took a walk up there, Miss Brandon and I.”
“Oh—” And Dick Selmes stopped short, and then thought what an ass he was making of himself. So that was why Hazel had been so anxious for him to go out and hunt! Old Greenoak was coming out of his shell—coming out with a vengeance.
As they went outside Kleinbooi, the Fingo, was in the act of offloading the quarry. It certainly was a fine ram, but Dick noticed with inward disgust and heart-searching that Hazel seemed to show but little interest in it, or in his own doings. And by this time it had become of very great importance to him that she should feel interest in his own doings.
“What would you say to moving on, Dick?” said Greenoak that afternoon. “We’ve been here a good while, you know.”
The other’s face fell.
“Yes, I’m afraid we have,” he said. “But where shall we go next?”
Greenoak gave him some inkling of the bearing of the Commandant’s letter, and the idea caught on, but with half the alacrity wherewith it would have been received had a certain entrancing young person not been a fellow-guest at Haakdoornfontein.
“When shall we start?” asked Dick, somewhat ruefully.