[Swallow by H. Rider Haggard]@TWC D-Link bookSwallow CHAPTER V 5/11
As shall be seen, this indeed He did. Then they rose, and having, not without difficulty, lifted the riet-buck ram upon Ralph's horse and made it fast there, as our hunters know how to do, they started homewards, walking the most part of the way, for the load was heavy and they were in no haste, so that they only reached the farm about noon. Now I, watching them as we sat at our mid-day meal, grew sure that something out of the common had passed between them.
Suzanne was very silent, and from time to time glanced at Ralph shyly, whereon, feeling her eyes, he would grow red as the sunset, and seeing his trouble, she would colour also, as though with the knowledge of some secret that made her both happy and ashamed. "You were long this morning in finding a buck, Ralph," I said. "Yes, mother," he answered; "there were none on the flats, for the grass is burnt off; and had not Suzanne beaten out a dry pan for me where the reeds were still green, I think that we should have found nothing.
As it was I shot badly, hitting the ram in the flank, so that we were obliged to follow it a long way before I came up with it." "And where did you find it at last ?" I asked. "In a strange place, mother; yes, in that very spot where many years ago Suzanne came upon me starving after the shipwreck.
There in the glade and by the flat stone on which I had lain down to die was the buck, quite dead.
We knew the dell again, though neither of us had visited it from that hour to this, and rested there awhile before we turned home." I made no answer but sat thinking, and a silence fell on all of us. By this time the Kaffir girls had cleared away the meat and brought in coffee, which we drank while the men filled their pipes and lit them.
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