For nearly a week he had been travelling incessantly, and for the last two nights he had not only not slept, but also had endured much mental excitement and bodily peril.

Were it not for the brandy that Tanta Coetzee gave him he could never have tramped the fifteen miles or so of ground which he had covered.

Now he was quite broken down, and felt that the only thing which he could do, wet through as he was, would be to lie down somewhere, and sleep or die as the case might be.

Then it was that he remembered the little cave near the top of the Kloof, the same from which Jess had watched the thunder-storm.

He had visited it once with Bessie after their engagement, and she had told him that it was one of her sister's favourite haunts.
If he could but reach the cave at any rate he would find shelter and a dry place to lie in.