The policeman looked at Ned with a suspicious and most unfriendly scowl.
“Are you going to stay long in the Transvaal, younker?” he asked.
“I don’t think so. Why?”
“Because I fancy, if you were, that you would be likely to spend most of your time in the tronk and the stocks. That is where your sort mostly find a home here.”
Ned prudently did not reply. His shirt had been examined and his pockets turned out. He did not want to have to unlace his boots next.
“I’ll report that younker as a dangerous character. Keep an eye on him as you go along,” cried the chief to the Groblaars, as he rode off with his men.
Stephanus took no part in this conversation, while his cousin only chuckled good-naturedly, as if it were a good joke. He was an easy-going fellow, and did not let anything trouble him much beyond the keeping of the wine cool and the oxen in good condition.
It was about four o’clock the third afternoon after this that they lumbered into Johannesburg amidst a cloud of dust, and unharnessed for the last time together.
Our heroes said good-bye with all friendliness to the vine-grower’s son; and with a cold word or two to the still sullen Stephanus, they went off together to the house of Clarence Raybold, senior.
Taking it all through, their journey up-country had been an educating and a pleasant one. They had passed through a prosperous land, full of variety and strangeness. They had met all sorts of people, both white and coloured, and every description of pastures. They were brown with the fierce sun and covered with the white dust, and totally changed, outwardly and inwardly, from the schoolboys who left England such a little time ago.