A Frontier Mystery Author:Bertram Mitford General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1905 Original Publisher: F.V. White Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can sele... more »ct from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER III OF AN EVENING VISIT As I rode down the rugged bush path I began to undergo a very unwonted and withal uneasy frame of mind. For instance what on earth had possessed me to take such an interest in the well-being or ill- being of Major Sewin and his family ? They would never get on as they were. The best thing they could do was to throw it up and clear, and, for themselves, the sooner the better. And for me? Well, exactly. It was there that the uneasiness came in. The sun was dipping to the great bush-clad ridge up the side of the Tugela valley, and the wide sweep of forest beneath was alight with a golden glow from the still ardent horizontal shafts. Innumerable doves fluttered and cooed around, balancing themselves on mimosa sprays, or the spiky heads of the plumed euphorbia; or dashing off to wing an arrow-like flight somewhere else, alarmed by the tread of horse- hoofs or the snort and champ at a jingling bit. Here and there a spiral of blue smoke, where a native kraal in its neat circle stood pinnacled upon the jut of some mighty spur, and the faint far voices of its inhabitants raised in musical cattle calls, came, softened by distance, a pleasing and not unmelodious harmony with the evening calm. Downward and downward wound the path, and lo, as the sun kissed the farridge, ere diving beyond it, a final and parting beam shot full upon the face of a great krantz, causing it to flush in red flame beneath the gold and green glow of its forest fringed crest. Ah those evenings ! I think it must be something in their sensuous and magic calm that permeates the...« less