Whilst they were eating it, leaving Mouti to keep an eye to them, he strolled away and sat down on a bit ant-heap to think.
It was a wild and melancholy scene that stretched before and behind him.
Miles upon miles of plain, rolling east and west and north and south like the billows of a frozen sea, only broken, far along the Heidelberg road, by some hills, known as Rooi Koppies.

Nor was this all.

Overhead was blazing and burning one of those remarkable sunsets which are sometimes seen in the South African summer time.

The sky was full of lowering clouds, and the sullen orb of the setting sun had stained them perfectly blood-red.

Blood-red they floated through the ominous sky, and blood-red their shadows lay upon the grass.