“Yes,” he replied, “the road is rough and long. Farewell!” And he was gone.
“Well, he is a curious old buster, and no mistake, with his cheerful anticipations and his Wilhelmina,” reflected Jeremy, aloud. “Just fancy starting for Rustenburg at this hour of the night, too! Why it is a hundred miles off!”
Ernest only smiled. He knew that it was no earthly Rustenburg that the old man sought.
Some while afterwards he heard that Hans had attained the rest which he desired. Wilhelmina got fixed in a snowdrift in a pass of the Drakensberg. He was unable to drag her out.
So he crept underneath and fell asleep, and the snow came down and covered them.
CHAPTER XVIII.
MR. ALSTON’S VIEWS
The Zulu attack on Pretoria ultimately turned out only to have existed in the minds of two mad Kafirs, who dressed themselves up after the fashion of chiefs, and personating two Zulu nobles of repute, who were known to be in the command of regiments, rode from house to house, telling the Dutch inhabitants that they had an Impi of thirty thousand men lying in the bush, and bidding them stand aside while they destroyed the Englishmen. Hence the scare.
The next month was a busy one for Alston’s Horse. It was drill, drill, drill, morning, noon, and night. But the results soon became apparent. In three weeks from the day they got their horses, there was not a smarter, quicker corps in South Africa, and Mr. Alston and Ernest were highly complimented on the soldier-like appearance of the men, and the rapidity and exactitude with which they executed all the ordinary cavalry manoeuvres.
They were to march from Pretoria on the 10th of January, and expected to overtake Colonel Glynn’s column, with which was the General, about the 18th, by which time Mr. Alston calculated the real advance upon Zululand would begin.
On the 8th, the good people of Pretoria gave the corps a farewell banquet, for most of its members were Pretoria men; and colonists are never behindhand when there is an excuse for conviviality and good-fellowship.