"Ah!" said Uncle Ben sagely, "who knows?"
And Gerston, talking over this conversation afterwards with his wife, laughingly declared that he believed if the old fellow's pockets were overhauled, certain mysterious hieroglyphics intended to form a rough map would be found, and that this map would be the clue to some valuable gold shaft of which he had discovered, or imagined that he had discovered, the existence.
"There are plenty in Mashonaland," Gerston ended, "if only one could hit upon them."
Uncle Ben, as he insisted upon being called, proved a grand acquisition in the evenings, for he possessed a wonderful fund of stories, experiences of his own mostly; and these he was never tired of airing for the benefit of his listeners, of whom he had four in this house, all of the kind most charming to the narrator, because they were frankly and obviously interested and amused.
If his tales were to be believed—and the old man was accustomed to vow most solemnly that the experiences narrated were absolutely authentic—he had certainly been through every kind of adventure that the ingenuity of a humorous destiny could have invented at his expense: adventures with lions, with elephants, with Matabele warriors; perils by water and by land; in a word, every kind of experience likely to interest and enthral a listener had been his; and though, perhaps, listeners of the age of Bruce were the most delighted by his tales, they pleased almost equally listeners of any age, for they bore the stamp of truth.
It was natural, therefore, that young Bruce soon began to look upon the sturdy old stranger as a hero of the first water, a king among men, a person to be admired and loved and imitated, if the opportunity should ever arise; a mental condition on the part of Bruce which was confirmed by each new story of triumph over lions or other beasts, or of barely escaped capture by Matabeles or other bad characters.
It was while in the midst of an exciting tale of a night spent in the bare veldt within a hundred or two paces of an entire Matabele impi, during the whole of which time he dared not sleep, and scarcely allowed himself to breathe lest they should hear him; and of how at a critical moment he had sneezed—it was, in fact, exactly as Uncle Ben had reached this most critical point in his story that the sound of galloping hoofs suddenly became distinctly audible in the breathless silence into which the old man had been pouring out his yarns.
"Stop one minute, mate," said Gerston, rising; "let us see who this is. The letter-carrier, I daresay, though he doesn't generally ride that pace."
Gerston rose and went to the door. A moment later the panting horse of the new arrival pulled up at the garden gate, and the rider threw the reins over his animal's neck.