A MASK TAPLEY. 
147 
the Kaffirs all quiet, and free trade open all over the 
country. Windy, stormy, very cold weather. 
13 th. — My Kaffir Umgeba gave us the slip, and 
ran away on Thursday morning after getting the 
wagon started, and got four hours’ start ere we missed 
him; we immediately saddled up Graham and old 
Bryan, and went in chase. Anticipating a long ride, 
I crammed a couple of ducks and some biscuits and 
salt into a haversack, and put a blanket under my 
saddle; we rode back to Mooi Kiver Dorp, a good 
forty miles, never meeting a soul all the way, and 
never getting the spoor of the Kaffir; gave the horses 
some forage, and slept a short time in the stable till 
the moon was high, and started back, the coldest ride 
I ever had in my life; at last, was obliged to get off 
and run, to keep alive at all. I was never so anxious 
for sun-rise in all my life before, and it seemed as if 
he delayed his rising on purpose. Never a footprint 
of the wily savage; he fairly beat us, and knocked up 
our horses, and they can ill afford now to lose any 
flesh. I saw a man whom I formerly knew, a 
widower, with seven children, in the most abject cir¬ 
cumstances, and had not a scrap on earth to give 
them; his children are drafted out like hounds 
among the farmers, one here and one there. He 
would have me go with him to his place—merely a 
poll-house, he said, a temporary residence — and I 
was shocked to find nothing but the bare walls, a 
miserable bedstead and dry grass to sleep on, the 
lid of an old box on the floor, half a candle in 
