CHAPTER 1.VIII.He Catches the Old Bird.
At four o'clock the next afternoon the German rode across the plain, returning from his search for the lost sheep.

He rode slowly, for he had been in the saddle since sunrise and was somewhat weary, and the heat of the afternoon made his horse sleepy as it picked its way slowly along the sandy road.

Every now and then a great red spider would start out of the karoo on one side of the path and run across to the other, but nothing else broke the still monotony.

Presently, behind one of the highest of the milk-bushes that dotted the roadside, the German caught sight of a Kaffer woman, seated there evidently for such shadow as the milk-bush might afford from the sloping rays of the sun.
The German turned the horse's head out of the road.

It was not his way to pass a living creature without a word of greeting.