About three o'clock in the
afternoon
Of course I did not know this at the time , so for several hours I rode up and down the neighbouring kloofs , as the ground was too hard for me to hope to follow them by their spoor . It occurred to me to ask the boy where the horses came from , a question that he happened to be able to answer , as he had brought them home when they were bought the year before . Having learned in what direction the place lay I rode for it at an angle , or rather for the path that led to it , making the boy run alongside , holding to my stirrup leather . About three o'clock in the afternoon I struck this path , or rather track , at a point ten or twelve miles away from the Temple , and there , just mounting a rise , met the two horses quietly walking towards me . Had I been a quarter of an hour later they would have passed and vanished into a sea of thorn-veld . We caught them without trouble and once more headed homewards , leading them by their riems . Reaching the glade where the other two were tied up , we collected them also and returned to the house , where we arrived at five o'clock .