I put my foot in the stirrup, and vaulted into my saddle.  “They shall not be forgotten,” I answered, with a quiet smile at this pretty little evidence of fatherly feeling.  I rode off.  It was early morning, before the heat of the day began.  Hilda accompanied me part of the way on her bicycle.  She was going to the other young farm, some eight miles off, across the red-brown plateau, where she gave lessons daily to the ten-year old daughter of an English settler.  It was a labour of love; for settlers in Rhodesia cannot afford to pay for what are beautifully described as “finishing governesses”; but Hilda was of the sort who cannot eat the bread of idleness.  She had to justify herself to her kind by finding some work to do which should vindicate her existence.

I parted from her at a point on the monotonous plain where one rubbly road branched off from another.  Then I jogged on in the full morning sun over that scorching plain of loose red sand all the way to Salisbury.  Not a green leaf or a fresh flower anywhere.  The eye ached at the hot glare of the reflected sunlight from the sandy level.

My business detained me several hours in the half-built town, with its flaunting stores and its rough new offices; it was not till towards afternoon that I could get away again on my sorrel, across the blazing plain once more to Klaas’s.

I moved on over the plateau at an easy trot, full of thoughts of Hilda.  What could be the step she expected Sebastian to take next?  She did not know, herself, she had told me; there, her faculty failed her.  But some step he would take; and till he took it she must rest and be watchful.

I passed the great tree that stands up like an obelisk in the midst of the plain beyond the deserted Matabele village.  I passed the low clumps of dry karroo-bushes by the rocky kopje.  I passed the fork of the rubbly roads where I had parted from Hilda.  At last, I reached the long, rolling ridge which looks down upon Klaas’s, and could see in the slant sunlight the mud farmhouse and the corrugated iron roof where the oxen were stabled.

The place looked more deserted, more dead-alive than ever.  Not a black boy moved in it.  Even the cattle and Kaffir sheep were nowhere to be seen. . . .  But then it was always quiet; and perhaps I noticed the obtrusive air of solitude and sleepiness even more than usual, because I had just returned from Salisbury.  All things are comparative.  After the lost loneliness of Klaas’s farm, even brand-new Salisbury seemed busy and bustling.

I hurried on, ill at ease.  But Tant Mettie would, doubtless, have a cup of tea ready for me as soon as I arrived, and Hilda would be waiting at the gate to welcome me.