They answered him again, wondering somewhat at his strangeness. He tried to smile at them but bit his lip instead.
"Well—" he hesitated.
"I will fetch Mrs. Jakes if you like," said Margaret. "But I 'm quite sure Mrs. du Preez hasn't been here."
"No," he said forlornly. "Thank you. Good-by, Miss Harding."
The pony leaped under the spur, and they saw him gallop back to the road and across it towards the farm.
"Queer," said Ford. "Did you notice how humble he was while his eyes looked like murder?"
But Margaret had been struck by something else.
"I thought he looked like Mrs. Jakes," she said, "when I answer her back."
CHAPTER XIII
It was Kamis, the Kafir, ranging upon one of his solitary quests, who came upon them in the late afternoon, arriving unseen out of the heat-haze and appearing before them as incomprehensibly as though he had risen out of the ground.