THE LAND OF STRANGERS It had been a day of intense and brooding heat.

Black clouds hung sullenly low in the sky, and a heavy gloom obscured the face of the earth.

On each side of the railway the _veldt_ stretched for miles, vivid green, yet strangely desolate to unaccustomed eyes.
The moving train seemed the only sign of life in all that wilderness.
Sylvia leaned from the carriage window and gazed blankly forth.
She had hoped that Guy would meet her at Cape Town, but he had not been there.

She had come unwelcomed into this land of strangers.
But he would be at Ritzen.

He had cabled a month before that he would meet her there if he could not get to Cape Town.
And now she was nearing Ritzen.