That morning after Footsack and the voorlooper had been sent with some of the servants from the Temple to fetch up the contents of the wagon, for I was too tired to accompany them, having found that Anscombe was still asleep, I determined to follow his example.  Finding a long chair on the stoep, I sat down and slumbered in it sweetly for hours.  I dreamt of all sorts of things, then through my dreams it seemed to me that I heard two voices talking, those of our Marnham and Rodd, not on the stoep, but at a distance from it.  As a matter of fact they were talking, but so far away that in my ordinary waking state I could never have heard them.  My own belief is that the senses, and I may add the semi-spiritual part of us, are much more acute when we lie half bound in the bonds of sleep, than when we are what is called wide awake.  Doubtless when we are quite bound they attain the limits of their power and, I think, sail at times to the uttermost ends of being.  But unhappily of their experiences we remember nothing when we awake.  In half sleep it is different; then we do retain some recollection.

In this curious condition of mind it seemed to me that Rodd said to Marnham—­

“Why have you brought these men here?”

“I did not bring them here,” he answered.  “Luck, Fate, Fortune, God or the Devil, call it what you will, brought them here, though if you had your wish, it is true they would never have come.  Still, as they have come, I am glad.  It is something to me, living in this hell, to get a chance of talking to English gentlemen again before I die.”

“English gentlemen,” remarked Rodd reflectively, “Well, Anscombe is of course, but how about that other hunter?  After all, in what way is he better than the scores of other hunters and Kaffir traders and wanderers whom one meets in this strange land?”

“In what way indeed?” thought I to myself, in my dream.

“If you can’t see, I can’t explain to you.  But as I happen to know, the man is of blood as good as mine—­and a great deal better than yours,” he added with a touch of insolence.  “Moreover, he has an honest name among white and black, which is much in this country.”

“Yes,” replied the doctor in the same reflective voice, “I agree with you, I let him pass as a gentleman.  But I repeat, Why did you bring them here when with one more word it would have been so easy—­” and he stopped.

“I have told you, it was not I. What are you driving at?”

“Do you think it is exactly convenient, especially when we are under the British flag again, to have two people who, we both admit, are English gentlemen, that is, clean, clear-eyed men, considering us and our affairs for an indefinite period, just because you wish for the pleasure of their society?  Would it not have been better to tell those Basutos to let them trek on to Pretoria?”

“I don’t know what would have been better.  I repeat, what are you driving at?