THE CHANCE ENCOUNTER 171 
chance encounter? Last October three of us, 
walking to our fishing ground, were overtaken by 
a horse and carriage. A genial “Jump in, 
gentlemen !”’ greeted us. Wejumped in. We 
chatted gaily, and the distinguished-looking man 
who had put his carriage at our disposal made us 
thoroughly at our ease. He put us down near 
our fishing beat. It appeared that this was one 
of the big landowners of the district. Thank 
you, squire, from three strangers in the land !” 
Some people, travelling life’s round, seem rarely 
to run across old friends in unexpected places 
or to renew old acquaintances just by accident. 
But the world is a small parish after all, and to 
others of us chance meetings seem to be a matter 
of course. We are always knocking-up un- 
expectedly against somebody whom we have 
met before or who has come from, or been in, 
similar parts. I have come across Shropshire 
folk all over South Africa, even on the borders 
of Swaziland. A Scotsman of my acquaintance— 
now a leading architect in South Africa—was 
going over a mine on the Rand with a party 
of friends. Underground he came across a miner 
whom he felt sure he had met somewhere before. 
A few questions confirmed it. In the miner the 
architect had recognized an old acquaintance from 
his own village in Fifeshire, though he had no 
idea that he had come to South Africa. He 
remembered, too, that the miner used to have 
a beautiful tenor voice, and that one of his 
favourite solos was ‘ If with all our hearts ” from 
