“Well,” said Mills, “I wish you’d come up and see me at my kia.  Sure you can’t come now?”

“Yais, I coom now,” answered the other.

Mills stared. “’Fraid you can’t trust me to go alone, are you?” he queried. “’Cause, if so——­”

“Tha’s all right,” interrupted the Frenchman.  “I coom now.”

“Right you are,” said Mills heartily.  “Come along then!”

They strode off in the direction of the drift, Mills going thoughtfully, with an occasional glance at his companion.  The Frenchman smiled perpetually, and once he laughed out.

“What’s the joke?” demanded the trader.

“I think I do a good piece of business to-day,” replied the Frenchman.

“H’m, yes,” continued Mills suspiciously.

It was a longish uphill walk to the trader’s store, and the night fell while they were yet on the way.  With the darkness came a breeze, cool and refreshing; the sky filled with sharp points of light, and the bush woke with a new life.  The crackle of their boots on the stiff grass as they walked sent live things scattering to left and right, and once a night-adder hissed malevolently at the Frenchman’s heel.  They talked little as they went, but Mills noticed that now and again his companion appeared to check a laugh.  He experienced a feeling of vague indignation against the man who had saved his life; he was selfish in not sharing his point of view and the thoughts which amused him.  At times reserve can be the most selfish thing imaginable, and one might as well be reticent on a desert island as in Manicaland.  Moreover, despite the tolerant manners of the country, Mills was conscious of something unexplained in his companion—­ something which engendered a suspicion on general grounds.

The circle of big dome-shaped huts which constituted the store of Last Notch came into view against a sky of dull velvet as they breasted the last rise.  The indescribable homely smell of a wood-fire greeted the nostrils with the force of a spoken welcome.  They could hear the gabble of the Kafirs at their supper and the noise of their shrill, empty laughter.

“That’s home,” said Mills, breaking a long silence.

“Yais,” murmured the Frenchman; “‘ome, eh?  Yais.  Ver’ naice.”

“You may say what you like,” continued the trader aggressively.  “Home is something.  Though never so ’umble, ye know, there’s no place like home.”

“Tha’s all right,” assented the other gaily.  “I know a man name’ Albert Smith, an’ ’e sing that in the jail at Beira.  Sing all the night till I stop ’im with a broom.  Yais.”

Mills grunted, and they entered the skoff kia—­the largest of the huts, sacred to the uses of a dining-room.  It contained two canvas chairs, a camp table, a variety of boxes to sit upon, and some picture-paper illustration on the mud wall.  A candle in a bottle illuminated it, and a bird in the thatch overhead twittered volubly at their presence.  Some tattered books lay in the corner.