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+Project Gutenberg's A Vendetta of the Desert, by William Charles Scully
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Vendetta of the Desert
+
+Author: William Charles Scully
+
+Release Date: July 3, 2011 [EBook #36601]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A VENDETTA OF THE DESERT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England
+
+
+
+
+A Vendetta of the Desert
+By William Charles Scully
+Published by Methuen and Co, London.
+This edition dated 1898.
+A Vendetta of the Desert, by William Charles Scully.
+
+________________________________________________________________________
+
+________________________________________________________________________
+A VENDETTA OF THE DESERT, BY WILLIAM CHARLES SCULLY.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE.
+
+THE POWER OF THE DOG.
+
+Old Tyardt van der Walt, head of the family of that name, came of good
+Netherlands stock.  His grandfather had emigrated from Holland with his
+family in the middle of the Eighteenth Century and settled at the Cape.
+He bought a farm in the Stellenbosch district and there commenced life
+anew as a wine farmer.  The family consisted of his wife, a son and
+several daughters--all of whom married early.  At his death the farm
+descended to his son Cornelius from whom, in course of time, another
+Tyardt inherited it.
+
+The last-mentioned Tyardt forsook the settled and fertile environs of
+Stellenbosch and trekked forward to seek his fortune in the unknown and
+perilous wilderness.  A story is told as to the reason for this
+migration which, though it has no direct bearing on the story which is
+to be recorded in this volume, is interesting enough in itself to merit
+relation.
+
+There was, it is said, a gruesome legend connected with the van der
+Walts.  It dated from the times of William the Silent and was to the
+following effect:--The head of the van der Walt family of that period
+lived in the town of Maestricht.  He was a man of solitary habits.  In
+his youth his wife had deserted him for another.  He had been
+passionately attached to her, and he never recovered from the blow, but
+lived the rest of his days in solitude.
+
+Years afterwards, when he was quite an old man, a son of the man who had
+wronged him--a young and zealous Lutheran preacher, came to live in his
+vicinity.  This preacher was in the habit of visiting in disguise
+families of his co-religionists in the Provinces where the Spaniards
+held complete dominion.  He had a dog that had been trained to convey
+cypher messages from place to place.  Van der Walt betrayed this
+preacher to the authorities, with the result that he was captured and
+sentenced to be burnt alive.  The betrayer was among those who crowded
+round the stake to gloat over the agonies of the victim.  The dog had
+followed its master and, seeing his evil case, set up a piteous howling.
+The Spaniards, judging the heretic to be a wizard, and the dog his
+familiar spirit, caught the unhappy animal and bound it among the
+faggots at its master's feet.  Just as the pile was lit the preacher
+lifted up his voice and cried aloud:--
+
+"Gerrit van der Walt,--for thy black treachery to a servant of the Lord,
+thou shalt die in misery within a year and a day.  Thy soul shall wander
+homeless for ever and shall howl like a dog as the harbinger of
+misfortune whenever it is about to fall upon one of thy blood."
+
+It has been declared on respectable authority that from and after the
+death of Gerrit, which took place under miserable circumstances within
+the period named by his victim, a dog which was never seen would howl
+around the dwelling of any van der Walt about to die, for the three
+nights previous to the passing of his soul.  Thus a new terror was added
+to the death-bed of any member of the family.
+
+The following account of the last occasion when this warning howl was
+heard is firmly believed by the few surviving descendants in the direct
+line.  It is taken from an old manuscript which purports to date from
+the year in which the incidents related are alleged to have taken place.
+
+Towards the end of the last century, Tyardt's father, Cornelius van der
+Walt, lay ill in bed, but no one imagined that his illness was likely to
+be fatal, until one night after supper the dreaded howl was heard under
+his window.  The sick man, filled with terror, arose to a sitting
+posture in his bed, and called Tyardt, who was his eldest son, before
+him.
+
+"If that dog be not shot by you before the day after to-morrow," he
+said, "I will make my will anew and dispossess you of everything that
+the law will allow me to leave to others."
+
+Next day Tyardt brooded long and deeply over the occurrence.  He did not
+love his father, so the old man's death would have caused him no regret,
+but he knew that the threat would be carried out.
+
+There was an old and tattered family Bible on the loft, with a strong
+and heavy metal clasp.  This clasp Tyardt broke into fragments about the
+size of ordinary slugs, and with them he loaded his gun, using portions
+of the leaves as wadding.
+
+As soon as night fell he stole quietly out and posted himself among the
+branches of a small tree which grew just in front of the window of the
+room in which his father lay.
+
+The night was pitch dark; a damp fog had rolled in from the sea and
+covered everything.  Tyardt had not long to wait before a long, low
+howl, which curdled his blood with dread, arose from just beneath him.
+Terrified as he was, he thought of the property at stake, so he hardened
+his will to the purpose and carefully cocked his gun.
+
+There could be no mistaking the exact locality from which the howling
+came; it was almost at his feet.  He fired, and a horrible, half-human
+yell followed the report of the gun.  Then came a sound of scuffling
+upon the ground.  Soon a light was brought from the house, and then
+Tyardt descended from the tree.
+
+Beneath lay the huddled, bleeding figure of an old man of hideous
+aspect, clad in a garb unknown at the Cape but which, it was afterwards
+thought, suggested some wood-cuts in an old book brought out by the
+last-deceased van der Walt from Holland.  A sheet was thrown over the
+horror, and the trembling family sat up, waiting for, but dreading, the
+light of day.  It was not until after the sun had arisen that they
+ventured to go out and visit the scene of the tragedy,--but no trace of
+the body could be seen; nor was there any sign of the blood which had so
+much horrified the beholders on the previous night.
+
+There appeared to have been no doubt as to the main facts having
+occurred; slaves, servants, and, in fact, every member of the household
+except the sick man, had seen the body.  The mystery was never solved;
+no body was ever found; no one from the neighbourhood was missed, nor,
+so far as could be ascertained, had any man resembling the description
+of the body ever been seen in the neighbourhood.
+
+Cornelius van der Walt died during the following night, but without
+altering his will.  Tyardt, however, took the matter so much to heart
+that he became a changed man.  He came to hate the neighbourhood, and,
+leaving the farm in the hands of his mother and a younger brother, he
+set his face to the northward.  He purchased two wagons, packed them
+with his goods, and, with his young wife and three small children,
+plunged into the unknown wilderness.  After having passed some distance
+beyond the farthest outposts of civilisation, he at length halted high
+up near the head of a valley where the Tanqua River gorge cleaves the
+southern face of the Roggeveld mountain range.  Here he built a
+homestead and took possession of the ground surrounding it for some
+miles.  From the large numbers of elands which haunted the hills he
+named his new home "Elandsfontein."
+
+For some time he was left to enjoy the solitude for which his nature
+craved; but he lived long enough to feel himself inconveniently crowded
+when neighbours established themselves at distances of from fifteen to
+twenty miles from him on each side.  However, he still drew comfort from
+the thought that beyond the mountain chain which frowned down upon his
+homestead on the northward, the vast, unoccupied desert lay--and
+appeared likely to lie for ever unappropriated.  Moreover, it was
+certainly convenient to have the assistance of the aforesaid neighbours
+in hunting Bushmen, with whom the surrounding mountains were infested.
+
+The occurrence of the night before his father's death affected the
+character of Tyardt van der Walt permanently.  For years he could never
+bear to be alone in the dark;--he suffered from the dread that the
+horrible creature he had shot would re-appear to him.  This man, who did
+not know what fear of any material thing meant, was for long an abject
+slave to dread of the supernatural, and fell into a state of piteous
+terror if a dog howled within his hearing after dark.
+
+It is said that his death was, after all, caused by the howling of a
+dog.  During one of his periodical fits of nervous depression he felt
+unwell and, under his wife's persuasion, went to his bed one day a few
+hours before the usual time.  That night a dog howled on the hill across
+the valley; the sick man, as soon as he heard it, turned his face to the
+wall, saying that his summons had come.  He refused to take any
+nourishment, and died in the course of a few days.
+
+Strange,--that the crime of over two centuries back should have sent its
+baleful influence across the ocean wastes and the desert sands to drag a
+man who was blameless in it to his doom.
+
+No stouter-hearted men than those of the van der Walt stock ever took
+their lives into their hands and faced, with unflinching eye, the
+dangers of the desert which they helped so mightily to reclaim.  It is,
+however, an extraordinary fact that no member of this family in the
+direct line could ever hear the howling of a dog after nightfall without
+being reduced to abject terror.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO.
+
+HOW THE BROTHERS QUARRELLED.
+
+Tyardt van der walt left a widow, two sons--Stephanus and Gideon--who
+were twins, and three daughters.  As is usual among the Boers, the
+daughters married early in life; they have nothing to do with this
+story.
+
+The beginning of the quarrel between the twin-brothers dated from years
+back--from the time when they went down with a wagon load of game
+peltries and other produce to Stellenbosch and there fell in love,
+instantaneously and unanimously, with Marta Venter, their fair-haired
+cousin, whom they met in the street, coming from Confirmation class.
+Stephanus, the elder twin, had a slightly looser and glibber tongue than
+Gideon; besides, he was probably not so much in earnest as the latter;
+so, other things being equal, his suit was practically bound to prosper.
+When, after advantageously selling their load in Cape Town, the
+brothers inspanned their wagon and started for home, Stephanus and
+fair-haired Marta were engaged to be married and the darkened heart of
+Gideon was filled with a love which, in spite of many shocks and
+changes, never wholly died out of it.
+
+The wedding took place at the next _Nachtmaal_, Gideon managing, by
+means of some pretext, to avoid being present.  Soon afterwards old
+Tyardt cut off a portion of the farm and handed it over to his married
+son, who thereupon built a homestead and began farming on his own
+account.
+
+It was some time before Gideon could bring himself to meet his
+sister-in-law without embarrassment; however, an accidental event
+cleared the way for what appeared to be a complete reconciliation.  One
+day, when the brothers happened to be camped with their wagons on the
+southern bank of the swollen Tanqua River, waiting for the flood to
+subside, Stephanus, against his brother's advice, ventured into the
+current and was swept away.  Gideon dashed in to the rescue and saved
+his brother's life at the risk of his own.  After this the old friendly
+relations were, to all appearances, firmly re-established.
+
+These brothers strikingly resembled each other in both disposition and
+appearance.  Both were large, handsome, keen-featured men, with flashing
+black eyes and choleric tempers.  There was only one slight difference
+apparent: under strong excitement or deep feeling Gideon became morose
+and taciturn,--Stephanus excited and talkative.
+
+Shortly after old Tyardt's death the quarrel broke out afresh.  The
+portion of the farm assigned to Stephanus was secured to him by will;
+the remaining extent was bequeathed to Gideon.  The shares of the
+daughters in the estate were paid out in stock.  Elandsfontein was a
+large farm and was naturally divided into two nearly equal parts by a
+deep kloof running almost right through it.  In dry seasons this kloof
+contained no water, but on the side which had been assigned to Stephanus
+there was a small spring situated in a rocky depression which was filled
+with scrubby bush.  From this a pure, cool stream flowed.  Immediately
+after issuing from the scrub this stream lost itself in a swamp; near
+its source, however, it had never been known to fail in the most severe
+drought.
+
+Although the spring was about a hundred paces from the dividing line, a
+clause had been inserted in the will of old Tyardt, in terms of which
+the water was to be held as common property between the owners of the
+farm; thus stock from Gideon's land were to be allowed to drink at the
+spring whenever circumstances required.
+
+Within a very few years after old Tyardt's death the land was smitten by
+a heavy drought and the Elandsfontein spring soon proved unequal to the
+demands made upon it from both sides.  Then strife of the most
+embittered description resulted between the brothers.  The dispute was
+the subject of a law suit before the Supreme Court at Cape Town, but no
+satisfactory settlement was arrived at.  As a matter of fact--owing to
+the clumsiness with which the will was drawn--no settlement was possible
+without concessions on both sides, and neither brother would concede so
+much as a hair's breadth.
+
+The feud between the brothers became a scandal to the neighbourhood; in
+fact they could hardly meet without insulting each other grossly.  On
+several occasions they had come to blows.  The climax was reached when,
+in response to a formal call, they appeared before the court of elders
+of the Dutch Reformed Church at Stellenbosch.  After due enquiry had
+been made into the causes of the quarrel the brothers were called upon
+to tender hands to each other in token of reconciliation.  This they
+both refused, in insulting terms, to do.  Then the sacred and highly
+respectable precincts of the vestry became the scene of an unseemly
+brawl, and the brothers were formally excommunicated.
+
+Some time before this, and shortly before matters became hopelessly
+embittered, Gideon had married Aletta du Val, the daughter of a
+neighbouring farmer.  There was little love on Gideon's side, for he had
+never got over his first passion for his fair-haired cousin.
+
+One fateful morning in early summer Gideon placed the saddle upon his
+horse, took down from the rack his long-barrelled "roer," his bandolier
+of greased bullets and his powder-horn, and started for a ride along the
+western boundary of his farm.
+
+His flock of flat-tailed sheep were kraaled at an outpost which was in
+charge of a Hottentot herd, and he wished to count them.  This flock was
+in the habit of drinking every morning at the stream which had caused so
+much strife, for the weather had been dry for some months, and the
+rivulet which sometimes ran in the dividing kloof had long since
+disappeared.
+
+The day was hot, but not oppressively so.  Every now and then a breeze
+sweet with suggestion of the distant western ocean would breathe
+refreshingly over the arid land, acting like a tonic on all who inhaled
+it.
+
+The tulip-like cups of the sweet-scented gethyllis blossomed out in rich
+masses from the hot sand on the wayside, the wild notes of the chanting
+falcon seemed to fill the sky as the birds circled round the highest
+points of the cliffs that flanked the valley; the hoarse call of the
+sentinel baboons echoed from the black bluffs.
+
+On reaching the kraal Gideon found that the sheep had been turned out
+earlier than usual.  Then he rode to the spring and found it evidenced
+by the spoor, which lay thick about the water's edge, that the flock had
+already been watered.  Wondering at the reason for this manifestation of
+activity on the part of the usually-lazy Hottentot herd, he lit his pipe
+and stood for a moment or two enjoying the cool shade which surrounded
+the spring, after the heat of the ride.
+
+A slight sound caused him to turn his head and then he saw old Gert
+Dragoonder, the herd, step out from the cover behind him.  Gert had been
+on the point of falling asleep when his master's arrival had startled
+him.
+
+After ascertaining from the Hottentot that the flock of sheep were
+grazing safely behind the big bluff--well away from the dividing line--
+Gideon handed over to him his horse and told him to take the animal up
+to the sheep kraal and fasten it to a bush.  The sea-breeze was
+freshening and he meant, when the air became cooler, to take a turn on
+foot among the rocks high up on the mountain side, in the hope of
+getting a shot at a rhebok.  Gideon lay back under a bush and finished
+his pipe; then he turned upon his side and fell asleep.
+
+He awoke to the sound of a foot step and opened his eyes.  Before him,
+on the other side of the spring, he could see Stephanus, who had just
+dismounted from his horse.  The animal began to graze, its bridle hung
+and trailed upon the ground as it wandered on, cropping the herbage,
+until it crossed the dividing kloof.  When the animal had passed well
+over the boundary Gideon arose stealthily, seized his gun and hurried
+towards the horse with the intention of seizing it.  But Stephanus, who
+now noticed his brother for the first time, rushed forward and grappled
+with him, and the two fell struggling to the ground.
+
+Stephanus, being slightly the stronger of the two, managed to get Gideon
+under; then he twisted the gun from his adversary's grasp, sprang away
+to one side and looked back with a mocking smile.
+
+Stephanus cocked the gun and again looked at Gideon who, having risen to
+his feet, was trembling and livid with rage.  Stephanus knew that he had
+the law on his side; it had been laid down in the judgment of the court
+that although Gideon had the right to drive his stock to drink at the
+spring, he had no right to approach it for any other purpose.  Up to
+this not a word had been spoken; Gideon was foaming with impotent fury;
+Stephanus, feeling that he was master of the situation, had managed to
+keep his anger within bounds.
+
+"See the Jackal caught in his own trap," he tauntingly shouted.  "_My_
+Hottentot wants an old gun to shoot baboons with; this one will just
+do."
+
+"You are nothing but a bastard jackal, yourself," yelled Gideon in
+reply.  "You are very brave because you have my gun in your hand; put it
+down and I will take that dirty beard of yours to stuff my saddle with--
+if it would not give the horse a sore back."
+
+Stephanus, now in a transport of ungovernable fury, flung the gun away
+from him,--into the scrub,--and sprang towards his brother.  But the
+gun, after crashing through the branches, went off, and Gideon fell to
+the ground with his shoulder torn open by the bullet.
+
+Stephanus, his anger now completely gone, and feeling as if the events
+of the past few minutes had completely wiped out the black rancour which
+had darkened so many years, knelt at the side of his unconscious brother
+and cut away the coat and shirt from the neighbourhood of the wound.
+Then he tried to staunch the flowing blood with strips of cloth which he
+tore from his own garments.
+
+The wound was a terrible one; the bone had been splintered, and portions
+of it were visible at the spot where the bullet had emerged.  Stephanus
+made balls of moss which he tied up in linen rags and bound over the
+gaping mouths of the hurt.  Then he fetched water in his hat from the
+spring and flung it into the pallid face of the sufferer, who thereupon
+slowly began to revive.
+
+When Gideon opened his eyes they rested upon his brother's face for a
+few seconds without recognition, and then an expression of the most
+bitter hatred dawned upon his countenance and gradually distorted his
+features until they became almost unrecognisable.  The sound of
+approaching footsteps was heard, and immediately afterwards Gert
+Dragoonder appeared.  The Hottentot had seen Stephanus approach the
+spring and then, after a short interval, heard the shot, so he returned
+to see what had happened.  When Gideon saw Gert, he raised himself
+painfully on the elbow of his uninjured arm and gasped out in a voice
+horrible to hear:--
+
+"Gert--come here--you are my witness--the man, there--my brother--he
+shot me.--There lies my gun in the bush--he threw it there to hide it--I
+shall die of this.--Go to the Field Cornet--He tried to murder me--I am
+already a dead man.--He must hang--"
+
+Here he fell back once more in a faint Stephanus turned to the Hottentot
+who, thinking that his master was dead, was stealing away with the
+keenest terror depicted on his countenance.
+
+"Here, Gert,--take my horse and ride to the homestead--tell your
+mistress to send men with poles and sacks, and to send for Uncle
+Diederick at once.  Wait,--when you have told the mistress, ride off
+yourself on my horse as fast as you can for Uncle Diederick."
+
+Uncle Diederick was an old Boer who lived about half a day's journey
+away,--to the westward, and who had a reputation which extended all over
+the country side as a bone-setter and herbalist.
+
+The Hottentot galloped off, and Stephanus again turned to the wounded
+man, who by this time had recovered consciousness.  When Gideon's glance
+again fell upon his brother's face, his features, already twisted by the
+agony which he endured, took on an expression of diabolical malice,
+fearful to behold.  Stephanus spoke gently to him once or twice, asking
+if he were comfortable, but Gideon closed his eyes and maintained an
+obstinate silence.
+
+After about an hour had elapsed a party of people from the homestead
+arrived, carrying poles, skins and sacks.  Out of these a litter was
+soon formed.  When Gideon was lifted from the ground he groaned in
+anguish and half-swooned.  Again he rallied, and his eyes, blazing with
+hate, fell again upon his brother.
+
+"Remember"--he gasped--"if I die, he shot me.--There lies my gun--he
+threw it there to hide it--"
+
+Gideon insisted on the gun being sought for and removed from the scrub
+before he was borne away, groaning and cursing, upon the improvised
+litter.  Stephanus attempted to accompany him, but was driven away with
+imprecations.
+
+Stephanus returned to the spring and sat down on a stone, his head bowed
+over his clasped hands.  He sat in this posture for some time; then he
+arose, stood erect for a few moments and fell upon his knees.  The
+crisis of his life had come upon him; he stood upon that spiritual
+eminence from which men see good and evil and must distinguish one from
+another as clearly as one distinguishes night from day.  The tangled
+sophistry which his mixed motives weave to blind the wrong-doer, who
+often would fain do right if he but knew how, was cut by the sword to
+which the Apostle of the Gentiles likened the Word of God.  It was his
+Day of Judgment; he was the judge, the accuser and the accused.
+
+When Stephanus van der Walt arose from his knees he felt that his sins
+had fallen from him as the slough falls from a snake when the sun of
+Spring wakens it from its winter sleep.  His heart was burning with a
+deep and fearful joy,--his brain was braced with giants' strength to a
+sublime resolve.
+
+In the exaltation of his newly acquired faith Stephanus knew for a
+certainty that Gideon would not die of the accidentally inflicted wound,
+and he thanked God for the agony that would purge his brother's soul of
+its share in the mutual sin.
+
+Then, with head erect and springing steps he wended his way homewards.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE.
+
+BLIND ELSIE.
+
+Stephanus had two children, both daughters.  Sons had been born to him
+but they died in infancy.  His elder daughter, Sara, was seventeen years
+of age at the time of the encounter at the spring; Elsie, the younger,
+was eight.  She had been blind from her birth.
+
+Sara was comely to look upon.  Tall and dark, with strongly marked
+features, she resembled her father in appearance to a remarkable degree.
+Little Elsie took after her mother; she was of fair complexion, with
+long locks of dead-gold hair which took a wonderful depth of colour in
+certain half-lights.  Her eyes were very strange and in no way suggested
+blindness.  They were of a deep steel-blue colour, but in the lights
+which made her hair wonderful an amber tone would shimmer up through the
+blue and give forth startling gleams and flashes.  This peculiarity was
+especially noticeable when the child was under the influence of strong
+excitement.
+
+Elsie was a silent child and possessed a calm and happy nature.  Her
+faculty for finding her way about in the utter darkness in which Fate
+had hopelessly placed her was almost miraculous.  Strangers, seeing her
+eyes and noticing the sure and fearless way in which she went abroad,
+would often doubt the fact of her blindness, but, as a matter of fact,
+she was incapable of perceiving even the faintest glimmer of light.
+
+The soul of this blind child with the sweet inscrutable face, expressed
+itself in a passionate love for her father, and from the day upon which
+it came home to the strong, dour, hate-preoccupied man that this being
+who seemed the very incarnation of sunlight was doomed to walk in
+darkness all her days, he had wrapped her in a protecting love which was
+almost the only influence that kept him human, and which was the
+salvation of his better nature.
+
+Her touch--the mere flicker of her fragile, pink fingers upon his rugged
+forehead or his brown hand--would cool, for the time being, his hottest
+resentment; the renewed hatred born of an encounter with his brother
+would sink abashed before the unconscious glance of her deep, sightless
+eyes.  When she crept upon his knee and laid her yellow head against his
+breast it was as though the Peace of God were knocking at the door of
+his heart.
+
+Elsie possessed intelligence far in advance of her age and
+circumstances.  It seemed as though she never forgot anything that befel
+her or that she had heard.  With a strange, uncanny intuition she would
+piece together with extraordinary correctness such fragments of
+disjointed information as she acquired, and thus gain an understanding
+of matters almost as soon as she became aware of their existence.  The
+blind child's position in the household was a peculiar one.  Over her
+father, neither her mother nor her sister had any influence.  Of late
+years an almost hopeless estrangement had grownup between Stephanus and
+his wife.  Sara loved her mother, but for her father she felt little
+else than fear.  He was passionate and violent with all except Elsie;
+with her he was invariably gentle and reasonable.
+
+Thus it came to pass that Elsie became, as it were, the arbiter of the
+domestic destinies; neither her mother nor her sister ever attempting to
+direct her.  For several years she had been a law unto herself as well
+as to the household.  Few children could have stood this and remained
+unspoilt; in Elsie's case strength seemed to come with the strain.
+
+When Stephanus returned home after the encounter with Gideon he found
+the blind child waiting for him under a large mulberry tree.  This was
+her accustomed trysting-place; here Elsie would sit for hours when her
+father was away, waiting, with the pathetic patience of the blind, for
+his return.
+
+She advanced to meet him, guided by the sound of his footsteps, and took
+his hand.
+
+"Father,--why are you so late--and where is your horse?"
+
+"Late," he repeated, musingly--"yes, it is late, but not too late."
+
+The child's intuitive sense prevented her from questioning further.  The
+two walked silently towards the house.  Elsie was puzzled; for the first
+time she was conscious of something in her father which she not only
+could not understand--but which filled her with wonder and dread.
+
+At supper Stephanus, contrary to his wont, ate but little.  None of the
+others spoke to him.  It was the custom of the household for all to
+refrain from speech in Stephanus' presence whenever the feud reached one
+of its crises.  Supper over Stephanus arose and left the room.  Elsie
+followed him; she took his hand and led him to the mulberry tree, at the
+foot of which a rough bench had been made out of the debris of a
+superannuated wagon.  Stephanus sat down and Elsie seated herself upon
+his knee.  Then she passed her hands softly over his face, as though
+reading his features with her finger tips.
+
+"Father--you are not angry--but what has happened?  I cannot read your
+face."
+
+"Angry--no, my child; I shall never more be angry."
+
+"Strange--you seemed to have changed to-day; your voice has got so soft
+and your hand throbs.  Your face"--here she again passed her hands
+softly over his features--"feels happy--although you are not smiling."
+
+"My child,--one does not smile when one is happiest.  Yes I am happy,
+for God has forgiven me my sins and whitened my heart."
+
+"_Do_ you no longer hate Uncle Gideon?"
+
+"No, my child--all that is past."  Elsie sat silently nestled against
+her father's side until long after the others had gone to rest.  The
+soft touch of the night wind made the leaves of the mulberry tree
+whisper as with a thousand tongues.  To Stephanus they seemed as the
+tongues of angels welcoming him to his place among the saved.  To blind
+Elsie they sang that the feud which had made her father's life full of
+trouble was at an end; that he and she were happy together under the
+stars which she had never seen.  Happiness seemed to descend upon her
+like a dove.  Its poignancy fatigued her so that she sank to sleep.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR.
+
+UNCLE DIEDERICK.
+
+Uncle Diederick lived in a structure known in South Africa as a
+"hartebeeste house."  Such a structure suggests a house of cards in its
+most rudimentary form--when one card is laid against another and thus an
+edifice like roof without walls is formed.
+
+The house looked indeed like a roof with a very high pitch, from under
+which the walls had sunk away until it rested on the ground.  Thickly
+thatched, and closed by a vertical wall at the end opposite the door, it
+was very warm in cold weather and, in spite of the want of ventilation,
+fairly cool in the heat of summer.
+
+The end farthest from the door was fitted up with shelving, and the
+shelves were loaded with bundles of dried plants and jars, filled with
+tinctures, infusions and decoctions.  In front of the shelves stood a
+table and a bench,--the former bearing an ordinary pair of grocers'
+scales, and an immense volume which the sage always referred to before
+prescribing.  This volume was a translation into Dutch of a collection
+of herbalistic lore published in Italy in the Sixteenth Century; it was
+looked upon by Uncle Diederick's numerous customers with almost as much
+respect as the Bible.
+
+Uncle Diederick, judging from the extent of his practice, ought to have
+made a fortune,--and he probably would have done so had he been paid for
+his services in cash instead of in kind.  He was really a useful
+personage and saved many a life.  His absorbing taste for medicine and
+surgery--joined to his undoubted natural ability, would have made him a
+successful if not an eminent practitioner had he had the necessary
+training.
+
+When a boy he had obtained possession of an old book upon anatomy, and
+from this he gained a fair general knowledge of the human frame.  Later
+he acquired a manual of simple surgery and another of household medicine
+(as practiced in the Eighteenth Century), and upon these was founded his
+professional eminence.  These books were kept strictly in the
+background, their size and binding not being impressive, but the old
+Italian herbal was invariably referred to in the presence of the patient
+before diagnosis was completed.
+
+Even at this day every Boer woman in the outlying districts who has
+reached the age of forty, considers herself competent to treat all of
+the ills that flesh is heir to.  Her pharmacopoeia is a limited one,
+consisting, as it does, of some seven or eight drugs, all more or less
+violent in their effects upon the human organism.  In her choice of
+these in prescribing she is guided solely by her intuitions.  A century
+ago the number and quantity of drugs at her disposal was more limited,
+and therefore the mortality from this cause was less than at the present
+day.
+
+But Uncle Diederick was a quack of a different class.  He knew well
+enough that in a large number of cases the best chance of recovery lay
+in leaving Nature quite to herself.  Like Paracelsus, however, he had to
+live down to the prejudices of his age.  Many a bulky bottle of nasty
+but innocuous mixture did he prescribe to amplitudinous _tanta_ or
+corpulent _oom_, whose only complaint was the natural result of too much
+exercise of the jaw-bones and too little of the arms and legs.
+
+The old women looked upon Uncle Diederick with jealousy, but they could
+not help admitting that in surgery, at all events, he was far their
+superior.  In the case of a broken limb or a wound from a Bushman's
+poisoned arrow he was the first person thought of,--if the accident
+occurred within a radius of a hundred miles of his dwelling.  Many a
+miserable sufferer has been brought to the "hartebeeste house" from
+distances that entailed a week's travelling over wretched roads in a
+jolting wagon.
+
+In medicine Uncle Diederick did not by any means stick to the orthodox
+pharmacopoeia; he supplemented the few crude drugs in general use by a
+number of decoctions and infusions of different herbs, the properties of
+which he had learnt from Hottentots and captive Bushmen,--with whom he
+often managed to make friends.
+
+As the effect of these remedies was quite equal in violence to that of
+those in common use, and as there was an added element of mystery about
+them, Uncle Diederick's treatment was generally popular.  The Boer does
+not believe in any medicine which is not administered in large doses and
+which does not act as a kind of physiological earthquake upon the
+invalid.
+
+Uncle Diederick was a widower with an only daughter.  He had lost his
+wife soon after marriage, and, contrary to the general custom, had not
+remarried.  Jacomina, his daughter, was a comely damsel of seventeen,
+whose keen and practical interest in her father's pursuits boded a
+terrible future for her prospective husband and family.  It was she who
+presided, like another Medea, over the brewing of the decoctions; it was
+she who neatly bound up and carefully stored away the different kinds of
+dried herbs from which these decoctions were made.  In fact she knew
+almost as much as her father did about the healing art.  Where she shone
+brightest, however, was in collecting payment for her father's services.
+
+Many suitors had laid their hearts at Jacomina's substantial feet, while
+she, on her part, cherished a passion for the handsome, melancholy
+Adrian van der Walt, Gideon's son.  Adrian likewise admired her, but his
+diffidence kept him from definitely telling her so, or doing more than
+gaze at her in deep but hopeless admiration whenever he thought himself
+unobserved in her company.  For many months Jacomina had put forth all
+her arts to bring Adrian to the proposing point, but his unconquerable
+shyness always stood in the way of the desired result.  At a distance
+Adrian was brave enough, but in the presence of his beloved his courage
+fled.  On several occasions he had pretended to be ill in order to have
+an excuse for visiting the "hartebeeste house," when the nasty
+decoctions he received from the hands of Jacomina tasted as sweet as
+nectar.
+
+One day Uncle Diederick was sitting just inside the door of his dwelling
+engaged in the commonplace occupation of mending his saddle.  From the
+road behind the kopje at the foot of which he dwelt came the rattle and
+rumble of an approaching wagon.  He at once hid the saddle in a corner
+under a sheep skin, went over to his table, opened the herbal volume and
+began poring over its pages.  It was thus that he was usually found by
+his patients.  Jacomina was on the watch.  Shortly after the wagon came
+in sight she put her head in through the doorway.
+
+"Pa,--it is Aunt Emerencia's wagon; she is sure to be coming for some
+more medicine for her _benaudheid_."
+
+Aunt Emerencia descended from the wagon through the back opening of the
+tent by means of a short and strongly built ladder and, leaning heavily
+on a stick, approached the "hartebeeste" house.  She was a stout woman
+with a very pale face, the flesh of which seemed loose and flabby.
+Jacomina felt the strongest animosity towards the visitor, who was a
+widow and was suspected of harbouring matrimonial designs upon Uncle
+Diederick.
+
+After a friendly but breathless greeting Aunt Emerencia sat down on a
+stool and, being fatigued and warm from the exertion of walking up the
+slope from the wagon, pulled off her _cappie_ and began fanning herself
+with it.  After a few minutes Uncle Diederick came forward briskly.  He
+sat down, asked Jacomina to go and brew some coffee, and then, in his
+most sprightly manner, began talking to and complimenting his visitor.
+
+"No, no,--Uncle," she replied, deprecatingly, to some flattering remarks
+on his part,--"Although I may be looking well, I am very, very sick.
+Being on my way to Brother Sarel's I thought I would outspan here and
+get some medicine."
+
+"That's right--I am glad to see you, even though you are not well.--But
+a cup of coffee will do you good."
+
+"Yes,--I will be glad to drink a cup, Uncle.  I have brought you a
+couple of pumpkins which you will be glad to have; they are from some
+new seed which Jan Niekerk got from Stellenbosch last year."
+
+Jacomina, afraid to leave her father for long alone with the suspected
+siren, kept darting in and out between the stages of the coffee-making.
+
+"Jacomina, my child," she said in a wheezy aside, "call to the
+_schepsel_ and tell him to bring in two of the biggest pumpkins."  Then
+she turned to Uncle Diederick:
+
+"Uncle, I am sick, very sick.  After I eat my heart goes just like an
+old churn--and I dream--_Alle Wereld_, how I dream.  Last night I dreamt
+that Nimrod built the Tower of Babel on my chest."
+
+Just then a small Hottentot came staggering in with two immense
+pumpkins, which he laid on the floor; then he went and stood just
+outside the door.  Uncle Diederick cast a careless eye upon them, smiled
+almost imperceptibly, and then began very deliberately, to light his
+pipe.
+
+"Are these not beautiful pumpkins?" asked Aunt Emerencia.
+
+"They are fairly large; but I am surprised at Nephew Jan taking the
+trouble to bring that kind of seed all the way from the Cape.  There is
+plenty of the same kind here."
+
+"Truly?" she said in a tone of injured surprise.  Then she called to the
+Hottentot, who, mindful of previous experiences, had remained close at
+hand.
+
+"Here, _schepsel_,--bring in a bottle of that honey from the front
+chest.  Yes, Uncle,--you would not believe how I have suffered since I
+finished that last medicine I had from you.  This bottle of honey is
+from the bees' nest Piet took out from the _Dassie's_ Krantz last week."
+
+The honey was placed alongside the pumpkins.  Uncle Diederick did not
+even take the trouble to glance at it.  He went on silently puffing at
+his pipe.
+
+"Don't you like honey, Uncle?"
+
+"Yes,--but it is very plentiful this year, and I am tired of it."
+
+Aunt Emerencia groaned audibly.
+
+"_Schepsel_,--fetch that new pair of _veldschoens_ from the side-bag."
+
+"Yes," she continued, addressing Uncle Diederick--"and you would not
+believe what a pain I get here, just below my breast.  These drops I got
+from Aunt Susannah did me no good whatever."
+
+In the meantime Jacomina was busy trying on the _veldschoens_, which
+turned out to be by no means badly made.  Uncle Diederick continued
+smoking, calmly and silently.
+
+"Do they fit, my child?" he asked without turning his head.
+
+"Yes, Pa,--they fit well."
+
+At once Uncle Diederick laid down his pipe and began attending to his
+patient.  He felt her pulse; he thumped, prodded and sounded her until
+she groaned and grunted.  She was a woman who, for nearly thirty years,
+had eaten and drunk largely, and who never took the least exertion that
+she could avoid.  Her malady, from which she chronically suffered, was
+simply indigestion in an acute form.
+
+"Here, Aunt,--take half a cupful of this whenever you feel bad."
+
+He took down from the shelf a large black flask, which had originally
+contained gin, and handed it to the invalid, who grasped it greedily.
+
+"Uncle,--these _veldschoens_ are a beautiful pair.--This bottle holds so
+few doses and I get sick very often."
+
+Uncle Diederick had returned to his seat and his pipe.  He took not the
+slightest notice of what Aunt Emerencia said.  She, knowing by
+experience that there was no chance of screwing another bottle out of
+the physician, arose with the apparent intention of taking her
+departure.  But first she tried another move.
+
+"_Alle Wereld_," she said in anguished tones, putting her hand to her
+side at the same time--"here is the pain again; can you not give me a
+dose now, Uncle?"
+
+"Yes, Aunt,--certainly.  Jacomina, bring me a corkscrew and a cup."
+
+These implements were soon brought and placed upon the table.  Uncle
+Diederick took the corkscrew and approached the sufferer.
+
+"Come, Aunt--give me the bottle and I will open it for you."
+
+"But, Uncle,--I do not like to open the bottle whilst on the road.  It
+is so liable to spill."
+
+Uncle Diederick returned to his chair, the inscrutability of his visage
+somewhat modified by a palpable wink.  Aunt Emerencia, after a few
+supplementary groans, stated that she felt a little better and would
+defer taking a dose until another bad attack came on.  Then she took her
+ponderous course back to her wagon.
+
+The sun was nearly down when the clattering hoofs of a galloping horse
+was heard on the road.  A few minutes afterwards Gert Dragoonder
+dismounted, and, without waiting to remove the saddle from his smoking
+horse, hastened to the door of the "hartebeeste house."
+
+"Well, _schepsel_," said Uncle Diederick, "it is easy to see that you
+have been riding your master's horse.  For how far has the Devil been
+chasing you?"
+
+"Baas must hasten," replied the Hottentot, breathlessly, "or it will be
+too late.  My master has got a bullet in the shoulder and he has bled
+plenty."
+
+"A bullet in the shoulder--that's bad.  What an accident!  Let's see,--
+to which of the loving brothers do you belong?"
+
+"Baas Gideon is my baas.  But it was not an accident; baas Stephanus
+shot my baas with his own gun."
+
+Uncle Diederick gave a long, low whistle.  "Well, I always said it would
+come to murder between those two.  Here, Danster,--saddle up my horse.
+Is the bone broken?"
+
+"The bone is coming out in big lumps," said Gert, with the exaggerative
+rhetoric of his race, "he has lost about a bucketful of blood and there
+is a hole in his shoulder you could put your fist into.  Baas must make
+haste and bring his very best medicine."
+
+"H'm.--If all that is true, it is the Field Cornet that they should have
+instead of me.  However, I suppose I must go."
+
+By this time the horse had been driven into the little kraal at the side
+of the homestead.  Uncle Diederick went to the shelf and took down a few
+bottles, bundles of dried herbs and bandages.  Then he selected from a
+camphor-wood chest a few home-made splints and rough surgical
+appliances.  All these he packed carefully into his saddle-bags.  After
+bidding a very matter-of-fact farewell to Jacomina, and telling the
+Hottentot to rest his horse for the night and return home quietly next
+day, he started on his long, lonely ride.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE.
+
+THE TRIUMPH OF GIDEON.
+
+Gideon, suffering great agony, had been carried home and laid upon his
+bed.  He adhered firmly to the false accusation which he had brought
+against his brother, and the whole world, or that portion of it which
+knew the van der Walts, believed in Stephanus' guilt.
+
+The Field Cornet, who lived only some twenty miles away, was sent for,
+and arrived during the night.  He took down the wounded man's statement
+in writing and then went over and arrested Stephanus.  When the written
+statement was read over in Stephanus' presence to the wounded man, he
+adhered to it still and, having by that time somewhat rallied from the
+shock, gave a supplementary account of what had transpired in such
+clear, circumstantial and deadly detail, that all present were convinced
+of its truth.  Stephanus maintained absolute silence.  Uncle Diederick
+did his duty as well, and probably as successfully, as if he had been a
+member of the Royal College of Surgeons.  After removing every splinter
+of bone and carefully cleansing the gaping wound, he laid a cooling,
+antiseptic compost of herbs all over the injured parts.  As Gideon's
+constitution was perfectly clean and healthy, he made a rapid recovery.
+The shoulder joint was, however, so seriously injured, that the arm was
+henceforth of little use.
+
+Marta and Sara were thrown into terrible distress by the arrest of
+Stephanus.  Elsie, taking her impressions of the situation from her
+father's mental state, retained her serenity, but was puzzled at the
+turn things had taken.
+
+Stephanus remained quite unmoved when the Field Cornet announced that he
+would have to make him a prisoner and take him to Cape Town, there to
+await his trial.
+
+A day's delay, to enable him to put his affairs in order, was all that
+he asked for.  This was granted, so he counted his sheep and cattle,
+assembled his servants,--whom he made promise to serve their mistress
+faithfully during his absence,--and wrote to the husband of his eldest
+sister to ask that his nephew, a lad of seventeen, whose services had
+recently been offered to him, might be sent to assist in managing the
+farm.  The letter was sent off by a special messenger, as his
+brother-in-law lived only a little more than a day's journey away.
+
+The Field Cornet having acquainted Marta with the main facts of the
+case, she shared in the general belief in her husband's guilt.
+
+On the evening before Stephanus' departure for prison, the family sat
+down to their last meal together, and at its conclusion Stephanus did a
+thing which he had left undone for years past: he called upon those
+assembled to kneel down and pray.  Then he offered up a petition that
+God might forgive him his many misdeeds and grant him and all present
+patience to bear whatever punishment might be justly meted out to him.
+
+Elsie then took his hand and the two went out to the seat under the
+mulberry tree, where they sat until half the night was spent.  Few words
+passed between them, and the parting which was to take place on the
+morrow was hardly referred to.
+
+The unhappy women broke down completely at the leave-taking in the grey
+of the early morning.  Stephanus maintained his composure until it came
+to bidding farewell to Elsie.  The child clung to him convulsively, and
+her clasp had to be detached by force.  Then the father's anguish was
+terrible to behold.
+
+The trial took place at the criminal sessions of the Supreme Court in
+Cape Town, some four months afterwards.  The prisoner's family went down
+in their wagon to be present at it.
+
+Gideon gave his false evidence with composure, and Gert Dragoonder, the
+Hottentot, corroborated him strongly.  Stephanus pleaded "not guilty,"
+but otherwise made no defence.  When the court found him guilty not a
+muscle of his face betrayed the least emotion.  After the judge had
+sentenced him to be imprisoned for ten years with hard labour, he
+quietly remarked that he had been justly punished.  When he was removed
+from court it was noticed by those present who knew him that his step
+had a spring and his eyes a brightness which had never been noticed
+before.
+
+Gideon enjoyed one wild moment of exultation when his brother was led
+away to a living grave.  Then he turned to leave the court-room, from
+which the people were emerging in a struggling crowd,--the trial just
+concluded having closed the proceedings for the day.  In the vestibule
+he stood aside to let the congested crowd flow past.  A woman whose bent
+head was concealed in a long "cappie," and who led a young girl by the
+hand, was forced against him.  The child, frightened by the crowd,
+seized his hand and held it fast.  When the crush slackened he turned,
+looked down, and found himself gazing into the glowing, sightless eyes
+of little Elsie, the blind girl he had damned his soul to orphan.  Then
+he glanced up and met the eyes of the woman whom he loved still,
+although he had not seen her face for years.  There was something
+different to the reproach he expected in her look; he seemed to read in
+it an appeal for forgiveness of the wrong which she imagined her husband
+had done him, and to see the flicker of a love answering his own, which
+filled him with dismay.  The mute appeal in her eyes was worse than any
+reproach could have been, and the fact that his perjury had made her
+worse than widowed seemed to crush him to the earth.
+
+In another moment Marta and Elsie had followed the last of the crowd and
+Gideon found himself alone.  Then the nobility of the mien of the man
+whom, innocent, he had sent forth to a doom more sorrowful than death
+came back to his mind with such dread distinctness that it excluded
+everything else.
+
+Suddenly it seemed all unreal;--could it be a dream?  No--there was the
+court-room--he could see it through the open doorway before which he was
+standing.  He stepped forward on tip-toe and looked in.  Involuntarily
+his eye sought the prisoners' dock--the spot where his twin-brother had
+stood with rapt, unmoved face and heard the pronouncement of his doom.
+His strained brain easily conjured up the figure in all its menacing
+nobility, and before the vision he felt abased to the dust.
+
+Had there been another human creature present, Gideon would have cried
+aloud a confession of his sin, but he stood alone with the hideousness
+of his own transgression.
+
+Then a reaction set in and he staggered from the room grasping wildly at
+the shred of comfort which lay in the realisation of the fact that the
+man whom he had hated through so many bitter years had now been taken
+out of his life.  A strange duality was set up in his consciousness:--it
+seemed as though the man he had seen undergoing sentence, although still
+his brother, was no longer the Stephanus who had used him so
+despitefully.  Thus his mind was buffeted hither and thither by a gusty
+storm of conflicting emotions.
+
+So the long-looked-forward-to triumph of Gideon van der Walt sank foully
+smouldering upon its own ashes, and he entered into that hell out of
+which there is seldom redemption.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX.
+
+GIDEON AND MARTA.
+
+Night had almost fallen when Gideon reached his homestead on the seventh
+day after the trial.  He had been, throughout the whole journey, a prey
+to the keenest misery.  In the short and broken sleep which visited his
+distracted brain the image of Stephanus as he had last seen him, haunted
+his dreams.  The dauntless mien and the noble courage with which his
+brother had met his doom; the puzzled, pathetic expression upon the face
+of the blind child; the belated revelation of love combined with a
+terrifying appeal for forgiveness which he had read in the face of the
+woman for whom his passion had never died, swept over the field of his
+consciousness like clouds across a storm-swept sky.  He felt no remorse
+for what he had done; on the contrary, his inability to enjoy the
+revenge he had long panted for, was the cause of redoubled resentment
+against his enemy.
+
+After greeting his family with forced cheerfulness, Gideon drank a cup
+of coffee and at once retired to bed, saying that he felt fatigued after
+his long journey.  His wife, Aletta, was not deceived by his demeanour,
+but there was that in his face which caused her to forbear asking any
+questions.
+
+Next morning Gideon tried to avoid everybody, and it was not until
+midday that Aletta contrived to satisfy her painful suspense in regard
+to the result of the trial.  He was then standing at the back of the
+wagon-house with bent head and an air of painful preoccupation.  He did
+not hear her approaching footsteps.  When she laid a hesitating hand
+upon his arm he started as though he had been struck, and looked at her
+with troubled eyes.
+
+"Gideon," she said in a low and hurried tone--"tell me about Stephanus."
+
+"The wolf is in a trap," he said with a savage laugh--"for ten long
+years he will have to bite the door before it opens."
+
+"Ten years"--repeated Aletta in an awed whisper--"_poor_ Stephanus; I
+did not think it would have gone so hard with him."
+
+"Aletta," he broke out wrathfully, "are you taking the part of this
+wolf--this jackal in a man's skin, against me?"
+
+"No--no--Gideon,--I do not take his part;--but ten years is such a long
+time.--And I was thinking of Marta and the children; they will never see
+him again."
+
+"And a good thing too.  The murdering wild beast should have been
+hanged."
+
+In reality the wives of the brothers had, all through the weary course
+of the feud, been inclined to take the parts of their respective
+brothers-in-law against their husbands.  Each, brought into daily
+contact with the black rancour displayed by her husband, had thought
+that the feeling could not possibly be so bad on the other side.
+
+Weary as had been the days to Aletta and Adrian, those which followed
+were wearier still.  A black cloud seemed to brood over the household.
+No one ever smiled.  Each avoided the eyes of the others as though
+fearful of what the eyes might read or reveal.  At each cheerless meal
+the silent, invisible presence of Stephanus seemed to take its seat; in
+the brightest sunlight its shadow seemed to darken the house.
+
+More than once Aletta had been on the point of suggesting that advances
+might be made to Marta in her loneliness, but Gideon had lately got into
+the habit of bursting into such fury on the slightest provocation, that
+Aletta was afraid of irritating him and held her peace.
+
+Gideon, also, had more than once thought of going to visit his
+sister-in-law, but the dread of again meeting what he had read in her
+eyes on the day of the trial held him back.  It was currently known that
+Marta was in bad health and that Uncle Diederick had been called in to
+prescribe for her more than once.
+
+Thus the weary days dragged on through three weary years, but the
+stricken household kept no count of time.  In material things Gideon
+prospered.  Each season the years came with unusual regularity, and his
+flocks and herds increased until he became rich among his fellows.
+
+One day two figures were seen approaching from the direction of
+Stephanus' homestead.  They turned out to be those of the blind girl,
+Elsie, and a very diminutive Bushman lad named Kanu, who had grown up on
+the farm.  Kanu had been captured as a child, years before, in the
+course of an exterminating raid upon some Bushman depredators at their
+stronghold in an almost inaccessible part of the Roggeveld Mountains.
+
+Kanu was about sixteen years of age.  From her early childhood he had
+devoted himself to the service of the blind girl; at last his devotion
+had grown to positive worship.  In Kanu's company Elsie would wander far
+and wide, over mountain and plain, in perfect safety.
+
+The Bushman had picked up a smattering of Dutch, but still spoke his own
+tongue fluently, for there were a number of semi-domesticated Bushman
+servants on the farm--captives from different raids.  Such raids were,
+no doubt, sometimes rendered necessary by the plundering propensities of
+the pygmy sons of Ishmael, but there was another side of the question:--
+where Bushmen were plentiful the Boers did not, as a rule, find it
+necessary to purchase slaves.
+
+The blind child was led by her guide to the front door of the house,
+which stood open.  The day was hot and the family were sitting at table,
+trying to hurry through their dismal midday meal.  Elsie crossed the
+threshold without knocking and stood at her Uncle's side.  Her hair hung
+below her waist in a rich, yellow mass, and her eyes gleamed as they
+always did under the influence of excitement, and in appropriate light.
+The three sitting at the table sat and gazed at her in silent and
+startled surprise.
+
+"Uncle Gideon," she said in a clear, piercing voice.
+
+"Well," said Gideon in a voice of forced roughness, "what do you want?"
+
+"My mother bids me tell you that she is dying, and that you must come to
+her at once."
+
+Gideon rose to his feet, his face twitching.  Elsie slowly turned, held
+out her hand for the guiding twig which Kanu extended to her, and
+stepped swiftly forth.
+
+Within the space of a few minutes Gideon sprang on a horse and galloped
+off in the direction of the homestead where the woman he loved lay
+dying.  Marta sent one of the servants to fetch a span of oxen, and soon
+followed her husband, in a wagon.
+
+When Gideon arrived at Marta's homestead he could at once see that
+directions had been given as to the details of his reception.  As he
+ascended the steep flight of steps which led to the _voorkuis_ the door
+swayed open and revealed the weeping figure of Sara, his niece.  Walking
+on tip-toe she beckoned to him to follow her, and led the way to an
+inner room, the door of which stood ajar.  Gideon entered, every nerve
+in his body tingling with apprehension.  Sara softly closed the door
+behind him, and then he heard her retreating footsteps upon the clay
+floor of the passage.
+
+The dying woman lay propped up in bed, her cheeks flushed and her lips
+parted in a smile of loving welcome.  She looked, for the moment, not
+more than twenty years of age.  Her face carried Gideon back to the
+spring morning of long ago, when he met her for the first time, walking
+under the budding oaks of the Stellenbosch street.  With a last,
+pathetic effort of coquetry, the poor remnant of her once-beautiful hair
+was spread over her shoulder.  Her hand appeared for an instant from
+under the bed-clothes; it looked like the hand of a skeleton in a livid
+glove.
+
+Gideon stood for a space looking into the smiling eyes of the woman whom
+he loved and sunning himself in their dying glow.  The soiled years
+seemed to shrivel away like a burnt-up scroll, the past lived again in a
+borrowed glamour of lost joy that had never existed and his withered
+heart expanded like a rose in summer.
+
+With a long-drawn sigh he sank to his knees at the side of the bed and
+pressed his lips hurriedly upon the tress of silky hair; then he drew
+hurriedly back, startled at his own temerity.  Marta turned her head
+slightly until she could see his face.  Her eyes became softer with the
+dew of happiness and a smile hovered upon her lips.  Then she spoke:
+
+"Listen--I am dying;--will you take my children and care for them?"
+
+Gideon could not speak; he nodded his head and she proceeded:
+
+"I only knew you loved me when it was too late...  I waited for you to
+speak--then they said that you loved someone else--"
+
+Gideon's brain was busy recalling the long-past.  Every obscure detail
+of the days of his brother's courtship and his own bitter disappointment
+came back to him with strange distinctness.  How had the
+misunderstanding arisen; who was to blame?--"Stephanus always hated you
+and I loved you all the time--Aletta need not know--I only tell you now
+that I am dying--"
+
+Gideon tenderly took the wasted hand and laid it against his rugged
+cheek.
+
+"My children--I love them--Let them not suffer for their father's sin--"
+
+"Wait, Marta," said Gideon in a strained and trembling voice, "I must
+tell you--"
+
+"There is nothing to tell--I know it all.--He got to know I loved you
+and he tried to kill you.--Forgive him, if you can, for my sake--"
+
+"Wait, Marta,--I must tell you the truth--you are wrong--I must tell you
+the truth, even if it kills us both."
+
+The dying woman's lips became compressed, and the colour began to fade
+from her cheeks.  Gideon tried to move so that her eyes, full of
+startled interrogatory and the pain of apprehension, might not rest upon
+his face whilst he made his confession, but they followed and held his
+spell-bound.  Then in a hoarse, broken murmur he said:
+
+"Stephanus shot me by accident--I accused him falsely--because I hated
+him all my life."
+
+When he ceased speaking he drooped his head and hid his face among the
+bed-clothes next to Marta's shoulder.  A slight shudder went through the
+woman's frame and then she ceased to breathe.  Gideon kept his head
+bowed for a long time.  When, by a torturing effort he lifted it, he saw
+a dead, ashen face lying on the pillow at his side,--the face of an old
+woman who seemed to have died in sharp agony.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+When Gideon left the chamber of death he moved like a man in a dream.
+Mounting his horse mechanically he allowed the animal to stray homewards
+at a walk.  He met the wagon in which Aletta was hurrying to the
+death-bed as fast as the team of oxen could bring her, but he passed it
+without recognition.
+
+The pathway led past the spring, the scene of the three-years' past
+tragedy.  The day was hot and the horse turned, aside to drink as was
+its wont.  It was not until the animal paused and bent its head to the
+water that the rider recognised the locality.  He was quite calm and the
+environment in which he found himself seemed appropriate to his mood.
+He dismounted when the horse had finished drinking, led it away to a
+spot where it could graze, a few paces distant, and then returned to the
+water-side.
+
+He went over the whole scene anew.  There was the spot where he had sat
+sleeping; he stepped over and sat there again, in the same attitude.
+There Stephanus had approached through the bushes; yonder was the place
+where the struggle for possession of the gun had taken place and where
+he had ignominiously sunk to the ground beneath his brother's superior
+strength.  A little to the right was the green tussock upon which
+Stephanus, after wrenching the gun from his grasp, had stood and looked
+insulting defiance at him.  He recalled the face which bore such a
+detestable resemblance to his own, and remembered its look of triumphant
+hate.  He recalled the taunting words that Stephanus had uttered and his
+own insulting reply.  Again he felt the sickening torture of the
+crashing bullet tearing through flesh and bone.  Involuntarily he lifted
+quickly the half-crippled limb; a torturing twinge shot through it and
+almost made him scream.
+
+His thoughts swung back--searching among the mists of old memory for a
+clue to the one that had wrecked his life by telling falsehoods about
+him to the woman he loved, and who, he now knew for the first time, had
+loved him.  Who could it be?  None but the brother whose life he had
+been fool enough to save and who had always been his evil genius.
+
+The scene he had just lived through was too recent for him to take in
+its full significance.  He knew that he had caused Marta's death by his
+confession--which he now bitterly regretted having made, and he wondered
+if they should meet in the next world whether she would hate him for
+what he had done.  He had left the house of death with the full
+intention of confessing his transgression and expiating it in the
+fullest manner.  It was not that he had made any resolution to this
+effect, but rather that a full confession, with its consequences, seemed
+to be the only possible outcome of what had happened.
+
+Now, however, he determined to maintain silence.  It was not that he
+dreaded the consequences of a confession to himself--his life was too
+full of misery for him to dread that--but rather that his somewhat
+waning hate of his brother had been reinforced by Marta's words, and he
+could not bring himself to abate a jot of that brother's bondage.  Had
+it been possible to confess his sin without benefiting Stephanus by so
+doing, he felt that he would have told his tale to the first human
+creature he met, were it only a Bushman.
+
+He had saved his brother's life; it was not much, after all, to demand
+ten years of that life for the exigencies of his revenge.  Stephanus, of
+course, deserved his punishment richly.  What business had he to
+interfere with the gun at all?  Every despiteful act,--every provocative
+detail, every maddening annoyance to which Stephanus had subjected him
+during the long, hate-blackened years of the feud, came back and grinned
+at him.
+
+He found himself wondering whether anybody had been listening at the
+door when he made his confession, and the sudden dread of this
+contingency took precedence of every other consideration for the time.
+Well,--if he had been overheard he would abide by the result and make a
+full confession; if not his lips should remain sealed.
+
+After the funeral, which Gideon attended with outward calmness, Aletta
+remained at the homestead for a few days arranging for the removal of
+the two girls.  Uncle Diederick, who had been called in professionally,
+but had arrived on the scene after Marta's death, said a simple prayer
+over the grave which was dug on the hill-side just behind the homestead.
+Sara was convulsed with grief, but Elsie hardly shed a tear.  She and
+her mother had always been strangers; now the blind child's utter
+ignorance of convention kept her from feigning a grief she did not feel.
+Gideon's mind was now so far relieved, that he had no longer the fear
+of anyone having overheard his confession.
+
+Uncle Diederick arranged to come and live at Stephanus' farm and manage
+it for the benefit of the two children, until Stephanus' release from
+prison.  Accordingly, the "hartebeeste house" was abandoned--Jacomina
+having, in the meantime, carefully packed up all the drugs, herbs and
+surgical appliances in boxes and skin bags, and placed them in the
+wagon.
+
+Thus, within a week of Marta's death Uncle Diederick and his daughter
+were settled in their new dwelling.  For months afterwards weary
+invalids from a distance continued to arrive at the "hartebeeste house"
+and to learn to their dismay that the physician had departed and left no
+address.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN.
+
+HOW GIDEON WANDERED, AND HOW ELSIE OVERHEARD HIS PRAYER.
+
+At the period at which the action of this story is laid the only settled
+parts of the Cape Colony lay well to the south of the rugged mountain
+chain, the eastern portion of which is called the "Roggeveld" or "Rye
+land."  It was in a valley which cleft the range that the farm of the
+van der Walts was situated.
+
+The Boer has ever been intolerant of near neighbours; he likes to feel
+that the utmost expanse his glance can sweep over is his, to use or
+neglect as suits him.  He has a great objection to any habitation being
+within sight of his homestead.
+
+For centuries the government tried to prevent the expansion of the
+Colony to a distance from the central authority at Cape Town, but the
+efforts were as useless as though one were to try to control quicksilver
+on a slanting board with the hand.  The enactment of the most stringent
+laws was of no avail to prevent the more adventurous spirits from
+seeking their fortune in the vast, mysterious hinterland.  Such men
+looked upon the heathen as their inheritance and on the wilderness as
+their portion.
+
+Steadfast in his narrow faith, tenacious as steel to his limited
+purpose, valiant as any crusader that charged the Saracens on the plains
+of Palestine, the primitive Boer was of the texture of the strongest of
+the sons of the earth.
+
+Such a typical Boer was Tyardt van der Waldt, the father of Stephanus
+and Gideon.  He had come to this lonely valley down which the
+yet-unpolluted Tanqua stream flowed through its waving sedges,--far
+beyond the camp of the boldest pioneer.  His wagon was his castle of
+strength; he trusted in the Lord of Hosts, and he kept his powder
+religiously dry.  He found hill and valley stocked with the great beasts
+of the desert, and on the blood of these he slaked his nature's needs,
+thanking God for the draught.  Upon the mountain side roamed the noble
+eland; in the thorny copses the stately koodoo herded,--wild cattle with
+which Providence had stocked the pasture for his use.  Here was his
+Canaan.  More fortunate than Moses, he possessed it,--whilst vigour yet
+thrilled his foot and hand.
+
+At night the deep-rumbling growl of the marauding lion would be heard in
+the scrub below the cattle-kraal, and the trembling touch of wife and
+children as they clung to him, made the strong man rejoice in his
+strength.  Every considerable mountain-cave harboured his Amalekite, the
+Bushman,--and him he hewed in pieces before the Lord whenever
+opportunity offered.
+
+To the Northward of the Roggeveld the wide and usually waterless plains
+of what is yet known as Bushmanland stretched away indefinitely.  Arid
+as these plains are, and apparently always have been, they supported an
+enormous amount of animal life.  Many of the larger fauna of South
+Africa can exist for an indefinite time without drinking; some, such as
+the gemsbok or oryx, can dispense with it altogether, owing to the
+instinct which teaches them to dig for succulent tubers in the arid sand
+dunes, from the surface of which every vestige of vegetation may have
+disappeared.
+
+Many a time had Tyardt van der Walt trekked over the mountain chain with
+his wagon and penetrated a few days' journey into the waste.  Then he
+would return with a load of game of kinds different from those found
+among the mountains.  A sense of danger, which is the salt of life to
+some natures, lent zest to these expeditions.  This danger was by no
+means imaginary; the bones of many an adventurous Boer have been gnawed
+by the jackals of Bushmanland.
+
+Gideon had, as a boy, accompanied his father upon some of the later of
+these expeditions.  Now, when his load of unrecognised remorse hung
+heavily upon him, he sighed his tired soul towards the vast and vague
+unknown which lay, rich in the glamour of the unknown and the
+mysterious, beyond the frowning mountain rampart.  There, he had come to
+think, Peace must surely have her habitation; into that solitude the
+ghosts of men and things could not follow.  He put his wagon in order,
+loaded it with provisions and ammunition enough to last for several
+months, and went forth into the wilderness.
+
+Aletta, reminiscent of disasters, opposed the idea, but Gideon was not
+to be withheld from his purpose.  The mind of the unhappy wife, in whose
+heart love for her husband still dwelt, in spite of half a lifetime of
+neglect, was full of apprehension.  Many were the current tales of Boers
+who had gone northward upon hunting trips, as her husband was now about
+to go, and who never again had been heard of.  Lured by the fugacious
+verdure upon the shining track of some vagrant thunderstorm which had
+filled the "pans" with water, and made them look like silver shields
+strewn upon some tourney-field of the gods, they had ventured farther
+and farther, forgetting that the thirsty sun was busy behind them,
+drinking up the moisture and cutting off their retreat.  Other
+narratives told of cheerful camp-fires with men sitting around them,
+tired after a long day's hunting.  Suddenly would come a silent flight
+of deadly arrows.  Then would the fires be hurriedly quenched, and a
+volley fired at random into the darkness in the vain hope of smiting a
+foe as subtle as a serpent, as nimble as a swallow and as noiseless as a
+ghost.  Afterwards the homeward struggle of a few desperate survivors,--
+those still unwounded trying to alleviate the agony of their dying
+comrades, well knowing that their every step would be doggedly followed
+by an implacable enemy, seeking a fitting opportunity of inflicting
+further slaughter by the same cruel means.
+
+However, after Gideon's departure, life at Elandsfontein took on a deep
+peacefulness.  The reaction from the constant dread of violence on
+Gideon's part was such a relief that something like happiness seemed as
+though it were about to dawn upon the stricken home.
+
+Aletta learned, to her surprise, that the domestic relations in
+Stephanus' household had never been satisfactory.  Bit by bit she
+learned from Sara things which threw a strange light upon Marta's home
+life.  It appeared that for the past two years Marta had not been right
+in her mind.  She had been in the habit of sitting silent and alone for
+days together, not answering when spoken to, and refusing to eat.  Ever
+since her husband's conviction she had manifested the strongest
+objection to his name being mentioned.  This had naturally had the
+effect of estranging Elsie completely from her.  Even Sara, to whom the
+mother had formerly been passionately attached, had recently been
+treated with indifference.
+
+The two girls now seemed to find in the woman who had always hitherto
+been lonely, what they had missed in their own mother.  Aletta had
+always felt the greatest pity for Stephanus; knowing, as she did, the
+provocation he had sustained, and the rancour Gideon had shown.  A
+sympathetic bond was thus set up between the three, and the ever-present
+sorrow was shorn of some of its more painful features.
+
+Insensibly Elsie became the centre of the household.  She was now twelve
+years of age.  In spite of the fact that her intellect as well as her
+intuitions had developed to a strange and almost unnatural extent, her
+stature and features were still those of a very young child.  With her
+pallid and spiritual countenance, and her yellow hair hanging in a thick
+mass below her waist, the blind girl with the wonderful eyes startled
+and impressed all who saw her, and seemed, in her rugged surroundings,
+like a being from another world.
+
+Elsie's aunt and sister seemed to take a pride in decking out her
+strange beauty with whatever they could obtain in the way of simple
+finery, such as infrequent wandering hawkers brought to the lonely
+homestead.  Even in those days traders used to wander over the land with
+wagons loaded with simple necessaries, and there always was a box full
+of such things as women take delight in, the contents of which were
+looked upon almost with awe by the simple daughters of the wilderness.
+The best material in the simple stock would be purchased for Elsie's
+dress;--the brightest ribbon for her hair.
+
+Kanu, the Bushman, was still her guide as she wandered about at will.
+He would have long since followed the fashion of his kind and fled back
+to the wilderness that gave him birth had it not been for his attachment
+to Elsie.  One characteristic of the blind child was that she was
+utterly fearless.  She seemed to dread nothing.  One thing alone seemed
+to cause her any uneasiness:--the hoarse roaring of the baboons with
+which the black rocks that crowned the mountains on either side of the
+Tanqua valley abounded.  She seemed to read a menace in the guttural
+tones, and a pained expression could be noticed upon her face whenever
+they were heard.
+
+Gideon returned safely after an absence of four months.  His expedition
+had been successful in some respects; he had slaughtered much game; he
+had brought back all his cattle and horses.  But the peace he had gone
+to seek had eluded him.  In the daytime, whenever the divine rage of the
+chase was upon him, he would almost forget the past,--but at night,
+which is the season in which those who love the desert feel the full
+force of its mysterious and almost rapturous calm, the memory of his sin
+hovered over him like a bat and kept sleep and rest from his tired soul.
+Sometimes he would seem to catch glimpses of the sad face of the
+Peace-Angel hovering pityingly afar,--desiring but unable to succour him
+from his tormentor.
+
+After he had spent a month or two at the farm Gideon again became
+violently restless.  Elsie's presence seemed to cause him keen
+discomfort.  When he spoke, as he seldom did whenever he could maintain
+silence, the sightless eyes of the child would train themselves upon his
+face, until the guilty man found himself overcome by a sense of
+inquietude which drove him away from the range of the accusing look.
+
+A party of restless spirits visited Elandsfontein on their way northward
+in search of adventure and large game.  Gideon at once made up his mind
+to join them.  He had been wishing for another opportunity of getting
+away, but had dreaded going again alone.  The shadow of the feud had
+caused an estrangement between himself and the neighbouring farmers such
+as made it impossible for him to join any of the hunting parties got up
+from time to time among his acquaintances.  But these people were
+strangers; the occasion offered the very opportunity he had sought.  The
+hunters were poor, their cattle and horses were of inferior quality and
+their stores were meagre.  Gideon was rich, and his joining the
+expedition suited the strangers as well as it suited him.  So Gideon van
+der Walt once more set his course towards the wilderness, in the vain
+hope of finding the footsteps of Peace.
+
+Nearly a year elapsed before he returned; he looked then at least five
+years older than when he had started.  He had penetrated farther into
+the wilderness than any European had previously done, and his course
+could almost have been followed from the whitening bones of the game he
+had slaughtered.  But the boundless desert had proved to be as close a
+prison to his guilty soul as the valley where stood his home.  He had
+quarrelled with his companions and came home alone.  But almost
+immediately the old restlessness fell upon him, and he longed anew for
+the wastes.  This time, however, he would go alone.  He blamed his
+companions for most of the dissatisfactions of his last excursion.  It
+was springtime when he returned; he would go forth once more when the
+first thunderstorms trailed over the desert.  Perhaps Peace dwelt
+farther away than he had yet reached.  He would find her dwelling even
+if to do so he had to traverse the length of the continent, and reach
+that Egypt of which he had read in the Bible, where the Lord loosed the
+Children of Israel from their bitter bondage.
+
+A few days before Gideon's projected departure Elsie and Kanu were
+resting in the shade close to the spring in the kloof, after a long
+ramble on the mountain side.  It was afternoon and the sun smote hard
+upon the drowsy earth.
+
+"I see the Baas coming this way again," said the Bushman.  "I wonder why
+he comes here so often."
+
+Elsie, although no doubt of her father's guilt had ever formulated
+itself in her mind, had developed an instinctive distrust of her uncle.
+Perhaps it was because he had done what she had never experienced from
+another--persistently avoided all communication with her.
+
+"It is a strange thing," continued Kanu, in a whisper, "but I saw him
+coming from here yesterday with the tears running from his eyes."
+
+It was Elsie's habit to sit, silent, motionless and absorbed in her
+thoughts, for long periods.  In her present situation she was completely
+concealed by the fringe of thick scrub which grew around the margin of
+the spring.  The Bushman instinctively crept into concealment close
+behind her and lay with every keen sense alert and a glint of curiosity
+in his bright, restless, suspicious eyes.
+
+The heavy, tired foot-fall of Gideon thudded nearer and nearer until he
+stood,--motionless, with folded arms and downcast head, at the side of
+the still, clear pool.  His intent look seemed to pierce the dark and
+limpid depths as though searching for a sign.  He stood thus for several
+minutes; then he dropped heavily upon his knees and covered his face
+with his hands.
+
+Then issued from the lips of Gideon van der Walt a prayer such as one
+might imagine being uttered from the heart of a lost soul upon whom the
+brazen gates of the Pit have closed for ever.  His petition was that God
+might give him forgetfulness and sleep,--just a little slumber when he
+laid himself down and folded his hands upon his breast in the night
+time.--Just a little forgetfulness of the past when the sun sank and all
+the world except himself lost itself in happy dreams or happier
+unconsciousness.
+
+Then he poured out his guilt in words which, although broken and
+incoherent, left no possible doubt as to their significance.  He
+bargained with his Maker: His brother's life,--the life which he had
+saved,--was it not, in a sense, his to dispose of?  And although
+Stephanus had not done the deed for which he was suffering punishment,
+had he not, by his heinous hate protracted through long years, deserved
+the heaviest chastisement that it was possible for him to receive?
+
+From all this storm of agonised and incoherent sophistry, only one clear
+idea reached the understanding of blind Elsie,--the innocence of her
+father--the knowledge that he was suffering cruel punishment for a crime
+he had never committed.  Until now she had never doubted her father's
+guilt.  Knowing the provocation he had received, she had made excuses
+for him, and her very soul had moulded itself on the conception that he
+was suffering just retribution for a broken law.  The conviction of her
+father's guilt had never diminished her love for him.  On the contrary,
+its effect was to heighten her affection to the most exalted pitch.  And
+now,--to know that he was innocent.  The clash of joy and indignation in
+Elsie's brain was such as almost to make her swoon.
+
+Gideon arose from his knees and wandered slowly away with bent head and
+set face.  He felt that his prayer had not been answered.  Every
+outburst of this kind had seemed to rivet anew the shackles which bound
+him to his load.
+
+Elsie and Kanu sat still until the sun sank, and then arose.
+Mechanically the blind child put forth her hand for the guiding
+willow-wand which she knew would be stretched out for her grasp.  As the
+pair walked slowly towards the homestead the dusk was glooming down.
+Elsie's brain was in a whirling turmoil when she set forth.  Only one
+thought stood fast, and that was as moveless as a rock in a stormy sea:
+To save her father--that was the task to which her mind set itself.  But
+how?  For the first time she bitterly regretted her blindness.  Poor,
+ignorant child, shut up in a cavern of formless darkness,--what could
+she do?  But before half the homeward road had been traversed, the
+turmoil of her mind had ceased and her thoughts had crystallised around
+a purpose as hard as steel.
+
+At the supper-table it was noticed that the blind child's face was paler
+and more set than usual, and that the lustre of her eyes was like red,
+molten gold,--but no word escaped her lips.  It surprised Aletta and
+Sara to find that Elsie did not reply when spoken to, but she had been
+so long a law unto herself that no particular notice was wont to be
+taken of her peculiarities.
+
+Supper over, she did not, as was her wont, go at once to her bed in the
+little room at the end of the front "stoep," where she was in the habit
+of sleeping alone, but sat in the "voorhuis" until all the others had
+gone to rest.  This was only "one of Elsie's ways," which were different
+from other people's.  To her the darkness had no more terrors than the
+day.
+
+Next morning no trace of either Elsie or Kanu could be found.  This
+circumstance was only rendered remarkable by the fact that her bed had
+not been slept in, and that a warm cape of brayed lambskin which she was
+in the habit of wearing in cold weather, as well as a loaf of bread from
+the "voorhuis" cupboard and a large piece of mutton from the kitchen,
+had disappeared.
+
+Search was made, but no trace of the missing ones could be found.  Word
+was passed on from farm to farm,--from one lonely squatter's camp to
+another, until the whole country side for hundreds of miles was on the
+alert.  The mountain haunts of the Bushmen were ransacked--with the
+usual accompaniment of slaughter and pillage,--the secret places of the
+desert were searched,--but without success.  Had Kanu been found he
+would have been shot at sight--so great was the indignation against him.
+Poor Kanu was tried, found guilty, and sentenced for the crime of
+kidnapping; fortunately, the defendant made default.
+
+Thus another fold of shadow was added to the gloom which wrapped the
+stricken household.  Gideon, whose mind was ever on the alert upon the
+devious planes of thought, speculated upon the mystery through the
+preconception that it contained some element which had been lost sight
+of.  Knowing Kanu as he did he could not conceive that the Bushman would
+have harmed Elsie.  An idea took root in his brain which bore a sudden
+fruit of deadly fear.  Setting spurs to his horse he left the
+search-party on the hill-side and galloped down to the spring at the
+margin of which he had made his wild confession.  Under a thick curtain
+of shrub a few yards from where he had knelt he found the undergrowth
+crushed down as though someone had recently sat upon it, and, close by,
+where a mole had thrown up a heap of loose earth, was the print of a
+small foot, freshly indented.  The discovery turned him sick with
+horror.
+
+In a few minutes, however, he laughed at his ridiculous fears.
+Nevertheless, a speculation which, he persuaded himself over and over
+again was quite preposterous, kept persistently coming back and grinning
+at him,--even after it had been driven away over and over again with
+contumely, by his better understanding.
+
+The days came and went with dreary monotony.  One by one the
+search-parties returned from their fruitless seekings.  After hurried
+preparations Gideon again set face towards the burning northern deserts,
+and resumed his vain quest for the habitation of Peace.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT.
+
+ELSIE'S QUEST.
+
+The excitement consequent upon the battle of Blauwberg and the conquest
+of the Cape by England had just died down, and the inhabitants of Cape
+Town were involuntarily coming to the conclusion that the English were
+not such stern tyrants as they had been led to expect.
+
+Juffrouw du Plessis and her two daughters were sitting in their garden
+behind the oleander hedge, through an opening in which they could look
+out over the lovely expanse of Table Bay.  The cottage, embowered in oak
+trees and with the north front covered by the soft green foliage of an
+immense vine, was built upon one of the terraces which lead up to the
+foot of Table Mountain, and which have, long since, been absorbed by the
+expanding city.
+
+Behind the cottage the frowning crags of the massive mountain had hidden
+their rigour beneath the "Table Cloth" of snowy cloud, whose tossing,
+ever-changing folds and fringes were flung like foam into the blue vault
+of the sky by the boisterous "South-Easter" which had given it birth.
+But in spite of the turmoil overhead, no breath of rude air disturbed
+the halcyon quiet which seemed to have spread a wing of wardship over
+the dwelling.
+
+An old slave who, notwithstanding his wrinkled skin and frosted hair,
+was still of powerful frame, was working with great deliberation among
+the flowers,--where large cabbage-roses lifted their heads high over
+violet-bordered beds that were sweet with mignonette and gay with pinks.
+The Juffrouw was of Huguenot descent and showed her French origin in
+the alertness of her movements and the sensibility of her features.  She
+was the wife of a merchant who carried on a flourishing business in the
+city.
+
+"Mother," suddenly said Helena, the younger girl, "while you were out
+this morning I met a blind girl with the longest and yellowest hair I
+have ever seen."
+
+"A blind girl.--Where was she?"
+
+"On the footpath behind the house."
+
+"And where did she come from?"
+
+"I do not know; she would not tell me.  I think she must be mad, for she
+said she was going to talk to the Governor and she asked me where he
+lived."
+
+"What an extraordinary thing."
+
+"Yes.  She was walking with a little Hottentot man, who was leading her
+by means of a stick.  She said they were both very hungry, so I gave
+them some bread and milk.  I left them sitting at the side of the path,
+eating, and when I went back to look for them they were gone."
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Elsie and Kanu sat at the side of a stream in a deep ravine in the
+western face of the Drakenstein Mountain range.  Around them was a mass
+of dense scrub which was gay with lovely flowers.  The child drooped
+wearily as she sat with her swollen feet in the cool, limpid water.  Her
+cheeks were faintly flushed, her lips parted, and her eyes shone with
+strange brilliancy.  It was the morning of the sixth day after they had
+stolen away from Elandsfontein.  Kanu looked gaunt with hunger.  Famine
+seemed to glare out of his hollow eyes.  In spite of the proverbial
+toughness of the Bushman, he was almost in the last stage of exhaustion.
+A belt made of twisted bark was tightly bound around his waist, and a
+bundle of grass and moss, rolled into a ball, was forced between it and
+his body, over the abdomen.
+
+"Kanu,--how much farther do you think Cape Town is?" asked Elsie in a
+tired voice.
+
+"I have heard the people say that the town lies under a big mountain
+with a flat top," replied the Bushman,--"I can see such a mountain far
+away across the sand-flats.  We will reach it to-morrow night if your
+feet do not get too sore."
+
+The child drew up her feet from out of the water and passed her fingers
+gently over them.  Even this slight touch made her wince.  She threw
+back her head with a movement of impatience.  Her eyes were swimming in
+tears.  Beside her, on the grass, lay a pair of tattered _veldschoens_.
+
+"Kanu,--do you think we will reach there in time to see the Governor
+to-morrow night?"
+
+"I do not know; we might not be able to find his house in the dark,--and
+perhaps he goes to bed early."
+
+"But, Kanu,--everyone must know the Governor's house, so you can knock
+at the first door we pass and ask where it is."
+
+"Yes,--we can try."
+
+"But, Kanu,--I _must_ get my father out of prison at once when we
+arrive.  I am sure the Governor will come from his house and open the
+door as soon as I tell him,--even if he is in bed and asleep when we get
+there."
+
+"I do not think you will see Baas Stephanus to-morrow night," replied
+the Bushman, after a pause.--"I heard from a man who had been there that
+the prison is not in Cape Town but in a place they call an island, in
+the sea."
+
+Elsie hid her face in her hands and burst into a passion of tears.  She
+had held out against hunger and fatigue, against exposure to chilling
+rain and scorching sun, her thoughts strained to the conception of "Cape
+Town" as an objective.  Often, when she was swaying with exhaustion, the
+words "father"--"Cape Town"--murmured half under her breath, would brace
+her flagging sinews.  And now it was bitter to hear that her father was
+not in Cape Town after all, but farther off still.  She had set her
+heart on meeting him immediately after her arrival.  The Governor was
+sure to be a good, pitiful man;--otherwise the great king across the
+sea, who now owned the whole country, would not have sent him to rule
+the land.  As soon as ever she had told her tale, he would tell one of
+his soldiers to take her down at once to the prison, which he would open
+with a big key.  Then her father would look round and, seeing his little
+blind daughter, would know that she had saved him,--which was more than
+people with good eyesight had been able to do.
+
+Over and over again the poor little child had rehearsed the scene of the
+meeting in her mind.  The groove was well worn, and she followed the
+details accurately, step by step.  She knew the feel of the big key; she
+had asked the kind Governor to let her hold it, and then that she might
+carry it down to the prison, instead of the soldier,--but the Governor
+said that he could not do this because it was against the law to let
+anyone have the key unless he were a soldier carrying a big gun.  Then
+the long walk down the street,--and how the soldier walked too slow, and
+how she knew without being told the direction of the prison.  Everything
+was quite clear until the key grated in the lock, as the key did in the
+lock of the barn at home,--and the heavy door swung back on its hinges.
+At this point imagination died in a swoon of bliss.
+
+However, Kanu comforted her with the assurance that the island was close
+to Cape Town; he was quite sure his informant had told him it could be
+seen from the city.  But she had to surrender the hope of seeing her
+father immediately after her arrival, and she felt that her former
+conception of the meeting and its prelude would have to be somewhat
+modified.  She had rehearsed the scene so often that it had become
+utterly real to her; to alter it now gave her the keenest pain.
+
+Kanu's woodcraft had stood Elsie in good stead on the journey, but it
+was all he could do to procure food sufficient to enable the child to
+bear up against the terrible hardships incidental to such an
+undertaking.  The Heavens had been propitious, in so far that but little
+rain had fallen, but the cold had been severe in the rugged mountain
+tracts they were obliged to travel through.  Water had been scarce at
+times and cooking had always been difficult.
+
+For these poor wanderers had to avoid frequented ways, and, even thus,
+to travel only by night, Kanu knew well enough that if they were seen by
+any European they would be stopped and sent home.  So every morning at
+daybreak they camped in the most suitable spot to be found in their
+vicinity.  Here, on a bed of soft moss or grass, carefully prepared for
+her by the tender hands of her savage guide, Elsie would slumber through
+the day, while Kanu foraged for food, and, after ascending some
+eminence, surveyed the country with reference to the night's course of
+travel.
+
+Kanu's adventures were sometimes alarming.  Once he came face to face
+with a Boer who was evidently in a bad temper, for he unslung his gun
+and, without a word of challenge, fired.  Kanu only saved himself by
+dropping behind a rock.  Then he fled, incontinently, before his natural
+enemy had time to reload.  More than the Boers he dreaded his own kind.
+The wild men had been so often treacherously deceived by tamed specimens
+of their own race who, after gaining their confidence, betrayed them to
+the Boers, that any stranger with the taint of civilisation upon him was
+liable to be put to death with horrible tortures.
+
+In his own native desert Kanu would have had no difficulty in finding
+enough of bulbs, roots, lizards and other local products wherewith to
+satisfy the needs of his own appetite, but the farther south his steps
+trended the more unfamiliar the flora and minor fauna became.  Even the
+little of this description of produce he found was of no use to Elsie;
+for her he had to steal, and it was in doing this that he ran into
+greatest danger.
+
+His habitual method of plundering was to locate a flock of sheep or
+goats, crawl around the bases of hills and up and down gullies until he
+got close to it, and then hang on its skirts until an opportunity
+offered for seizing and stifling a lamb or a kid.
+
+On the day before reaching the kloof where Elsie had the bitter
+disappointment of hearing that her father was not at Cape Town after
+all, but at some island beyond it, Kanu had, after waiting nearly all
+day for his opportunity, captured a lamb from a flock which was crossing
+the gully in which he lay waiting.  This lamb had loitered behind with
+its mother,--the shepherd being, at the time, engaged in beating up
+stragglers in another locality.  Kanu carried the prey into a deep,
+forest-filled hollow.  Here he lit a fire of dry wood, which gave off no
+smoke, and roasted the toothsome carcase whole.  Reserving the entrails
+for his own share, he stripped the roasted flesh from the bones and
+carried it back to Elsie, who was almost fainting with hunger.
+
+Being now so near their goal and in a country of well-defined roads and
+many travellers, who did not appear to take much notice of one another,
+Kanu consented to make a start whilst it was yet daylight, so the
+strange pair emerged from their concealment and moved slowly down the
+rugged side of the mountain.  When they reached the sandy flat at its
+foot they set boldly out towards the great mountain whose snowy cowl
+shone white as a snowdrift under the clear October sky.
+
+They walked on until deep into the night.  Elsie, buoyed up by her
+purpose and almost unconscious of her swollen feet, would still have
+pressed forward.  She declared that she felt no fatigue, but Kanu
+insisted on her lying down and then she fell into a deep sleep which
+lasted until dawn.
+
+As the light grew Kanu was astonished to find that the mountain looked
+nearly as far off as ever.  The unfamiliar atmosphere--close to the
+level of the sea had deceived him.  This day turned out to be the most
+fatiguing of all.  The sun smote fiercely upon the red sand and water
+was scarce and brackish when obtained.  However, when the sun sank they
+were nearly at the foot of the mountain.  The soft, steady breeze
+brought up the thunder of the surf from the Muizenberg beach, and filled
+the soul of the Bushman with dismay at the unaccustomed sound.  He had
+never been near the sea, so the thrilling diapason of the moving waters
+was full of terrors.
+
+"Kanu, are you sure that this is the mountain that Cape Town is under?
+Tell me, what it is like."
+
+Elsie had dropped in the road from sheer fatigue, and Kanu had borne her
+to a small copse, only a few yards away.
+
+"The side of the mountain is black with trees but its top is white with
+a cloud that never moves."
+
+"Yes,--that is the mountain," said the child in a tone of relief; "my
+father told me that it always had a white cloud upon its top."
+
+Then her head drooped and she fell asleep.
+
+Kanu tightened his belt and mounted guard.  In the desert, among the
+haunts of the fiercest beasts, he would have lain down after a few
+simple precautions, and felt perfectly safe.  Here, near the dwellings
+of Christians, he felt--and with reason--uneasy.  There was a small
+quantity of meat left, and the smell of it assailed his nostrils, made
+keen as those of a pointer by famine.  How he longed for that meat,--for
+only one bite.  The savage in his breast seized him as it were by the
+throat every now and then and tried to hurl him at the morsel.  But it
+was Elsie's, he told himself,--all she had to sustain herself with on
+the morrow, when there would be still a long walk before her.  At length
+he fell into a troubled sleep, and dreamt of sumptuous banquets for some
+delightful seconds.
+
+Another tug at the belt.  Well, it would soon be morning, and then this
+great, powerful, beneficent Governor whom Elsie knew of and talked such
+a lot about, would surely give them something for breakfast.
+
+When day broke the mist had drawn away from the mountain, the huge bulk
+of which stood out, robed in purple and edged with the gold of the
+unarisen sun.  Elsie slept long and deeply, and woke to a passionate
+flood of accusing tears when she found that the sun was already high.
+
+As they walked along the well-beaten road they met other sojourners.
+The savage instinct in Kanu prompted him to hide in the bushes whenever
+he saw anyone approaching; but, when he found that of the many
+passers-by none attempted to interfere with them, he merely bent his
+head and hurried furtively past.  No houses were yet in sight, except
+two square structures high up on the shoulders of the mountain.  These
+were the watch-houses from which, in yet older times, the approach of
+the Indian Fleet was wont to be signalled to the Castle.  The Bushman
+devoutly hoped that the Governor did not live in either of these, for he
+knew that Elsie, weak as she was, would never be able to make the
+ascent.
+
+Anon they reached the shores of Table Bay, and the wide expanse of water
+filled the Bushman's soul with deep awe.  The scent of the sea stung the
+flagging blood of the spent child to new vigour; the "whish-whish" of
+the wavelets and the wild, strange cries of the sea-birds--perhaps they
+had flown across from the island where her father was waiting for her--
+spoke to her strained ear in tones of sweetness and mystery, which
+thrilled through her to the very depths of her being.  Her fatigue and
+her lacerated feet were forgotten; she seemed to tread on air.
+
+At length Kanu gave a sudden exclamation;--the goal of their terrible
+endeavours was at last in sight.  There, shimmering in the soft, opaline
+haze, lay the lovely city, its white flat-topped houses embowered in
+trees, whilst the bright green slopes surrounding softened the contrast
+between its peaceful beauty and the mighty embodied desolation which
+seemed to prop the sky above it.
+
+Elsie did not speak, but her face lit up and her eyes flashed with
+almost unearthly gleams.  She felt that she was now at length, after all
+her sore travail, about to meet her father--her father who, innocent,
+had been torn from her and cast into prison among the vilest of men.
+Sweetest of all was the thought that she, in her own weak hands, was
+bearing to him the precious gift of freedom.  In imagination she was
+already passing her hands over his face, as she had been wont to do when
+she wanted to read his mood, and smoothing out the lines of suffering.
+The bliss was almost painful in its intensity.
+
+"Kanu,--Oh, Kanu--we are nearly there; are we not?"
+
+"Yes,--but I never thought there were so many houses in the whole world.
+It would take half an hour on a fresh horse to get to the farthest I
+can see."
+
+"Kanu,--I suppose the Governor lives in the biggest house; don't you
+think so?"
+
+"Yes,--but there are so many big houses that I do not know where to look
+for the biggest."
+
+The Bushman had been on the point of asking more than one of the people
+whom they had passed, in the street to direct them to the Governor's
+house, but he had invariably lost courage at the last moment.  In those
+days there was little traffic in the Cape Town streets except in the
+late afternoon, when many carriages were to be seen.  During the heat of
+the day all, gentle and simple, retired for the siesta.  Thus the
+wanderers reached the centre of the city without attracting any
+attention, and without meeting anyone but a few slaves, who were out
+executing errands.
+
+At length they paused before what Kanu felt sure must be the Governor's
+house.  It was a large building, several storeys high, and had a lofty,
+spacious "stoep" surrounded by heavy iron railings, which overlooked the
+street.  The big windows were flanked by bright green shutters which had
+been thrown back against the wall.
+
+A sound of music issued through the wide, open door,--interspersed,
+every now and then, with loud bursts of laughter.  Yes,--the Governor
+must certainly live here; he and his friends were, doubtless, holding
+revel inside.  A steep flight of steps led up to one end of the stoep;
+these Kanu mounted, leading Elsie by the hand.
+
+The Bushman paused before the open doorway and looked in.  The splendour
+appalled him.  Rich mats of varied colour covered the floor; wonderful
+coloured objects hung upon the walls; a large glass case stood upon a
+table just before him.  It was full of clear water, in which numbers of
+golden fishes darted to and fro,--red light flashing from their scales.
+Yes, this was surely the house he had been seeking.
+
+As he paused, shrinking back against Elsie who was trying to push him
+forward, a door suddenly opened on the other side of the room and a man
+as burly as any Boer Kanu had ever seen emerged, walking unsteadily.  He
+was dressed in blue cloth with bright buttons, and had a funny-looking
+glazed hat placed sideways on his head.  At first he seemed to be
+unaware that there was anyone but himself in the room.  When, however,
+he became conscious of the presence of Elsie and her companion he
+started, and paused unsteadily, hiccoughing.
+
+"Sam," he shouted to someone in the next room, "come and look at this."
+
+Sam came.  He also walked unsteadily.  He was nearly as big as his
+companion and was similarly dressed.
+
+"Well, Sam,--what do you make of it?"
+
+"It gets over me, Cap'n," said Sam, after a pause of anxious scrutiny.
+
+"Well,--I've been round the world and I've never seen hair like that--
+Say, my lass, where do you hail from?"
+
+Kanu replied in Dutch, asking if the Governor lived there, and if he
+were at home.
+
+"Dry up with that monkey-chatter, or I'll wring your neck," rasped the
+irate Captain.  Kanu shrank back in dread, pressing Elsie behind him.
+The Captain lurched over to the child and laid his hand on her shoulder.
+
+"My lass,--I've a little girl at Southampton who looks like you, but you
+can show her your heels as far as hair goes.--Why--Sam--the child's
+blind."
+
+The Captain had sat down on a chair, drawn Elsie towards him by the
+shoulders, and looked into her face at close quarters.  When his eyes
+met hers something penetrated to his perceptions through the fumes of
+the liquor he had drunk and told him she was blind.  Sam came forward
+and had a look.  He did not believe the child was blind, and said so.
+She was just a beggar, shamming.  He had often seen the same kind of
+thing on London Bridge.
+
+The Captain roughly, but kindly, drew the child again towards him.
+Elsie kept passive and silent in his hands.  Perhaps this was one of the
+Governor's friends,--or even the Governor himself.  She read his
+character by his touch, and trusted him, but she had shrunk away from
+Sam.
+
+"Come, my lass,--you look tired and hungry; is it some dinner you want?"
+
+Elsie, feeling that this remark was directly addressed to her, replied
+in Dutch, using almost the same words as Kanu had used.
+
+"I cannot understand this blooming lingo," growled the Captain--"Sam,--
+call the waiter."
+
+The waiter, a black boy, who spoke both Dutch and English well, came in
+and interpreted.  The Captain was mystified; Sam was sure that the whole
+thing was a "plant," and growled an advice to the Captain to keep a
+careful guard upon his silver watch.
+
+Then the landlady was called.  She, good woman, was too busy to be much
+interested.  However, the Captain sent for some food, which he gave to
+Elsie.  She ate a little and passed the rest on to Kanu, who ate it
+wolfishly.  The Captain sent for another plateful, which Kanu disposed
+of with great rapidity.  The Captain--and even Sam--became interested.
+The Bushman was asked, through the waiter, if he could eat any more.  He
+replied in the affirmative, so another, and after that yet another--
+plateful was brought.  This kind of thing might have gone on
+indefinitely, had not a young man, who looked like a merchant's clerk,
+come and taken possession of the Captain for business purposes.
+
+As he was going away, Elsie arrested him with a cry, and when he turned
+for a moment she begged pathetically to be told if the house she was in
+was the Governor's, and, if not, where his house was.  The Captain
+tossed sixpence to the black waiter and told him to take the
+"monkey-chap,"--for thus he designated Kanu,--down the street and show
+him where the Governor berthed.
+
+The waiter, fully persuaded that he had to do with two lunatics, hurried
+them up one street and down another at the further end of which stood a
+large white building.
+
+"There," said he to Kanu, "is where the Governor lives."
+
+Then he turned round and bolted.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINE.
+
+HOW THEY SOUGHT THE GOVERNOR AND FOUND THE GOOD SAMARITAN.
+
+Elsie's heart again bounded with delight as she and Kanu hurried along
+the street.  They reached the building indicated by the black boy.  It
+had a large doorway opening to the street on the ground floor; several
+wagons drawn by horses stood before it,--some full of bales and boxes,--
+others empty.  Kanu led the way in between the scattered parcels of
+merchandise and paused before a stout man who was making entries in a
+note-book.
+
+"Please, Mynheer, is the Governor in?" asked the trembling Bushman.
+
+The stout man glanced carelessly and contemptuously at his interlocutor.
+Then, having finished his entries, he closed his pocket-book, put it
+hurriedly into his pocket, and strode away.  Just then a truck heavily
+laden with sacks was trundled in at the door; Kanu quickly dragged the
+child aside and just saved her from being knocked down and run over.  A
+big Malay seized Elsie roughly by the arm and dragged her into the
+street; then he returned, caught Kanu by the neck and flung him after
+her.
+
+"Here," he said, "take your white brat away; you all know that we don't
+allow beggars here."
+
+The two belated wanderers drew a little to one side to avoid the traffic
+and stood in silent and astonished desolation.  In obedience to Elsie's
+prompting, Kanu accosted several of the passers with his now stereotyped
+enquiry about the Governor.  As a rule no attention was paid to his
+question.  One or two answered him with jibes.  At length a coloured man
+answered him kindly, telling him that the house opposite was a store,
+and that the Governor did not live anywhere in the neighbourhood.  He
+added significantly that they had better move on, or else he might get
+into trouble.  Kanu asked what trouble would be likely to come upon
+them.  The man replied that he might be whipped and added that his
+companion's hair might be cut off.  The threat of whipping filled the
+sensitive-skinned Bushman with terror.  He seized Elsie's hand and
+hurried away.
+
+By this time the sun had gone down behind the Lion's Head, and the
+streets were full of people.  The dismayed pair wandered about, sick
+with perplexity.  Poor Kanu had been utterly demoralised by the threat
+of the whip, and Elsie could not, for a long time, induce him to accost
+any of the people they met.  When he did so the result was the same as
+previously; no one would take his enquiry seriously.
+
+Their random steps took them to a quarter of the town where people of
+mixed race dwelt in low-built houses.  The streets were full of bands of
+shouting boys, who jostled them and jeered annoyingly.
+
+A stout coloured woman was standing at the door of a little shop, the
+stock-in-trade of which appeared to be composed principally of stale,
+unwholesome-looking fruit.  Some spell of kindness in the woman's homely
+face caused Kanu to pause.  Then the woman addressed Elsie in Dutch, in
+a kind voice, and the tired child bent her head and burst into a passion
+of tears.
+
+The woman drew Elsie into the shop and tried to comfort her, but it was
+long before the child's pent-up woe, terror and disappointment had spent
+themselves.  At length, when exhaustion had brought calmness, Elsie
+murmured that she wanted to see the Governor.  The woman at once looked
+askance at her, suspecting that she was mad.  But in a moment her look
+softened and her eyes became moist.  Then the kind creature drew the
+child into a little room at the side of the shop and laid her tenderly
+on a bed.  Elsie became calmer, so the woman drew off the tattered shoes
+and wept over the poor, lacerated feet.  She covered the poor waif up
+with a soft patchwork quilt, and soon had the satisfaction of seeing her
+sink into a deep sleep.
+
+The woman then went out to the shop, where Kanu was lying exhausted on
+the floor.  She questioned him closely--and afterwards angrily, but the
+Bushman was proof against her cross-examination.  All she could elicit
+from him was that they had come from a great distance and that they
+wanted to see the Governor about an important matter.
+
+The woman stole back into the room on tip-toe, and gazed at the sleeping
+child.  Made paler by sleep the face of Elsie looked like that of a
+corpse.  Her hair lay in a glowing, tangled mass on the pillow; the
+gazer picked up one of the tresses and examined it with reverent wonder.
+Then she left the room, closed the door softly, shut up the shop and
+went to her kitchen for the purpose of concocting some strong broth.
+
+It was late when Elsie woke.  Her hostess was sitting at the bedside.
+She soothed the child, gave her a drink of warm broth and made her lie
+down again.  Then the woman crept into the bed, and the two slumbered
+together until morning.  Kanu had been accommodated with a sack in the
+kitchen and a supper of fruit which had become unsaleable stock.
+
+At early dawn the woman arose, leaving Elsie still sleeping.  She went
+to the kitchen and lit a large fire, over which she placed a capacious
+pot of water.  Then she fetched a wooden tub and laid it noiselessly in
+the bedroom.  When Elsie awoke she found a good cup of coffee and a
+biscuit ready for her.  These she consumed with a good appetite.
+
+It was in preparing her for the bath that the woman found out that the
+child was blind.  Then her pity overcame her so that she sobbed aloud.
+She had lost her own only child, a girl of about Elsie's age, a few
+years previously.  After Elsie had bathed, the woman went to a cupboard
+and fetched out what was her greatest treasure,--the clothes of her dead
+child, which she had folded carefully away interspersed with aromatic
+herbs to keep out the moth.  With the best of the garments she clothed
+her little guest.  Then, after dressing the lacerated feet, she wrapped
+them in clean strips of linen, and put shoes and stockings which would
+have been much too large under other circumstances, upon them.  This
+done, she combed out the child's hair, marvelling audibly at its length
+and richness.
+
+Elsie could no longer resist the importunities of her kind friend, so
+she told her story,--how her dearly-loved father was in prison,
+suffering for a crime he had never committed; how she and Kanu were the
+only ones who could establish his innocence; how they had run away and
+wandered thither over mountain and desert plain for the purpose of
+seeing the great English Governor and obtaining justice.
+
+The woman did not know what to make of it.  The places named were
+strange to her; the whole thing seemed uncanny.  The extraordinary tale
+of the shooting, the child's blindness,--her wonderful tresses,--the
+savage, wild-animal look of her diminutive protector,--his language--an
+outlandish click-mingled corruption of an already corrupt patois--it was
+quite beyond the good soul's imaginative range, so she gave up the
+problem with a sigh and redoubled her tenderness to Elsie.
+
+After breakfast Elsie and Kanu again wandered forth on their pathetic
+quest.  The woman tried her very best to induce Elsie to remain, and let
+Kanu endeavour to locate the Governor's dwelling as a preliminary
+measure.  She herself could give no information on the subject, nor
+could any of the neighbours of whom she enquired.  She made Elsie
+promise to return if her search proved unsuccessful.
+
+This woman was a lonely soul, with nothing to love, and Elsie had made a
+way straight to her heart.  She exultingly made up her mind to adopt the
+child, knowing that the latter, even if she succeeded in finding the
+Governor's house, would never be let in by the attendants.  Therefore
+she made sure that her guests would return in the evening.  All day long
+she could think of nothing but Elsie, the silky richness of whose yellow
+hair seemed to adhere to her dusky fingers and to lie like chrysm upon
+her charitable palm.
+
+That day the little shop and dwelling was swept and garnished as it had
+never been since the death of the woman's own child.  Clean sheets were
+placed upon the bed and a new and more wonderful patchwork quilt was
+unearthed from the depths of the press and spread out in all its glory.
+As evening drew near she cooked a dainty little supper; the child would
+surely return hungry after her walk.
+
+The hour at which the visitors had arrived on the previous day drew on.
+Supper was ready,--done to a turn,--and the woman stood before her
+doorway, anxiously scanning the street, up and down.  The neighbourhood
+had grown loud with the strident tones of squalid children, rushing
+about in bands at uncouth games as was their wont.  The darkness came
+but there was no sign of the missing guests.
+
+The night drew on and the noises died down in the streets, until almost
+utter silence reigned.  When midnight struck in the spire of the distant
+church, the disappointed woman sadly closed the door.  She sat in the
+shop for a while longer, her ear alert for the footstep her heart
+yearned for.  Then she put out the light and went weeping to bed,
+leaving the untasted supper on the table.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TEN.
+
+THE SORROWS OF KANU.
+
+The two waifs resumed their search for the Governor's dwelling with
+feelings very different from those which had inspired them at the
+beginning.  Throughout the long, blistering morning they wandered about
+the streets, timidly accosting any occasional passer-by whose appearance
+suggested possibilities of kindness, but no one would take their
+enquiries seriously.  Some sent them purposely wrong, as one has seen
+unfeeling persons send an ignorant native round a village on April
+Fool's Day, carrying a paper with the legend: "Send the Fool on."  Most
+of the people they spoke to smiled and passed on; more than once Kanu
+had to spring to one side to avoid a blow.  He, poor savage, had a
+continual dread of the whip hanging over his shuddering shoulders,
+whilst cold and deepening despair lay like lead upon his blind
+companion's breast.
+
+And, truly, the appearance of the two was sufficiently _bizarre_ and
+startling.  Kanu, clad in a few tattered skins,--gaunt with famine, his
+body and limbs scarred by brambles and his quaking soul glaring out
+through his eyes,--his questions clothed in badly-broken Dutch and his
+whole manner that of a wild beast at bay,--why, such a being had never
+been seen in the city of Cape Town before.
+
+Of the two, however, the blind girl was the more alarming object than
+the Bushman, who made for her a most effective foil.  Her face was pale
+with the hue born of that fatigue and starvation against which her frail
+body had been braced by a great resolve and a transcendent hope,--but
+staring through this pallor was the bitter agony of disappointment and
+fear.  Her eyes, grown large and hollow, glowed deeply under the masses
+of her hair.  Her face had taken on a terrible beauty that seemed to
+radiate calamity and despair.
+
+Thus passed this day of tribulation, but it was late in the afternoon
+before the full measure of their sufferings was attained.  Elsie had
+sunk exhausted on the pavement near an almost deserted street-corner.
+Suddenly a noise of shouting was heard, and within a few seconds the
+terrified waifs found themselves surrounded by a swarm of tormenting
+street boys.  Elsie sprang to her feet and clasped her hands around her
+companion's sinewy arm.  They stood close to the wall, and the boys
+formed a half-circle before them.  The crowd seemed ever to increase.
+Although molested, neither was actually hurt.  Now and then some bolder
+urchin would jostle them and once or twice Elsie's hair was tugged at.
+But it seemed as though the touch of the rich fibre had some strange
+effect; each one who laid hands on it drew away at once, and slunk to
+the outskirts of the crowd, as though ashamed.
+
+They were rescued from this terrible predicament by three soldiers who
+were evidently taking a stroll.  These, seeing what was going on, laid
+into the persecutors with their canes to such effect that the street was
+soon clear.  Kanu spoke to his rescuers, asking the old question, but
+they could not understand his language, and passed on.
+
+Kanu now tried to shape his course towards the harbour of the previous
+night, trying to avoid the more frequented streets.  But the instinct by
+means of which the Bushman could find his way unerringly through the
+desert spaces in the deepest darkness, was useless to him here, in an
+unnatural environment.  He had lost all perception of distance,
+direction and locality.
+
+But yonder, impassive above this scene of persecution and confusion,
+towered the bastioned crags of the great mountain.  This at least was a
+wild, natural object Kanu turned towards it as a drowning man turns
+towards an islet suddenly seen close at hand in a waste of waters, and
+pressed up the steepening slope.  The shouts of the horrible boys became
+fainter and fainter as the waifs struggled up the rocky terraces.  It
+was sundown before they reached a rugged ledge at the foot of the main
+precipice.  Here were thick bushes and great irregular masses of rock
+scattered formlessly about; between them the tough mountain grass was
+thickly matted.  Elsie sank to the ground and lay as if dead.  She had
+got beyond tears; even the sense of pain had nearly died in her.
+
+Fortunately, Kanu still had his wallet, and in it was the piece of bread
+which their kind entertainer had given them in the morning.  There was a
+bright trickle of cool water issuing from a cleft at the foot of the
+cliff, and to this Kanu led the child after she had rested for a space.
+She had been for some time dreadfully thirsty, although hardly aware of
+the fact, and a drink of the cool water somewhat revived her.  Then she
+removed her shoes and stockings, and placed her feet on a stone where
+the water splashed upon them.  When Kanu placed a piece of bread in her
+hand she began mechanically to eat it.
+
+The site was suitable as a camping-place.  It was hemmed in by a
+loose-linked chain of great, irregular rocks, and, from the absence of
+paths in the neighbourhood, was evidently not often visited by human
+beings.  Around were strewn soft cushions of moss and sheaves of waving
+grass swayed from high tussocks.  Dead wood from the fallen branches of
+sugar-bushes lay about in considerable quantities.  Kanu gathered a
+number of these together and lit a fire at the back of the largest of
+the rocks.
+
+The weather was perfect.  At the Cape, Spring performs her duties at the
+time which chronologically ought to be Winter.  Thus, by the time her
+own proper season arrives, the flowers have already emerged to meet the
+mild, cloudless, steadfast sky, which, where the ground lies at any
+considerable elevation, scorches not by day nor chills by night.  Thus,
+the unthinking cruelty of man was, in the case of these derelicts, in a
+measure compensated for by the careless kindness of the heavens.
+
+"Kanu,--what shall we do?" asked Elsie at length, in a dejected voice.
+
+"I do not know.  It seems to be against the law down here to ask about
+the Governor," replied the Bushman, reminiscent of the possibility of
+the whip.
+
+"Kanu,--have you seen the island where the prison is?"
+
+"Yes,--it is far away across the water.  If the water were land it would
+take half a day to walk to it."
+
+After some further discussion it was finally agreed that next day Kanu
+was to leave Elsie on the mountain and continue his search for the
+Governor's residence alone.  So at break of day the Bushman stole down
+the mountain side and continued his quest.  At length he met one who
+vouchsafed a reply to his question.  This was a blind Hottentot beggar
+whom he met being led by a little child to the street-corner where he
+was wont to ply his trade.
+
+"The Governor," replied the beggar, with an air of superiority, "lives
+at Rondebosch, which is at the other side of the mountain, at this time
+of the year.  I know this, because my niece, who is a washerwoman and
+washes for his coachman, told me so."
+
+"Is it against the law to ask where the Governor lives?"
+
+"No,--why should it be against the law?"
+
+"Then one cannot be whipped for asking?"
+
+"Whipped? no; what an idea.  But there are many things a Hottentot can
+get whipped for, all the same."
+
+"What kind of things?" asked Kanu, starting.
+
+"Oh, plenty; stealing, for instance, or getting drunk, or being found in
+a garden at night.  But who are you and where do you come from?"
+
+Kanu was not prepared to answer on these points.  However, he managed to
+elicit some further particulars,--for instance that if he walked along
+the main road he would pass the Governor's house on his right hand; that
+the house had big pillars of stone before it; that two soldiers with red
+coats and guns walked up and down in front of it night and day.
+
+Kanu hurried away towards Rondebosch.  Two things it was imperatively
+necessary to do,--to locate the Governor's house, and to get something
+for Elsie and himself to eat.  He had left Elsie a small portion of
+bread,--hardly enough to serve for the scantiest of breakfasts.  His own
+hunger was horrible.  In spite of the tightening of his bark belt, which
+now nearly cut into his skin--the Bushman tribal expedient for
+minimising the pangs of famine--he was in agony.  He passed the fruit
+market and saw piles of luscious eatables that made his mouth water, and
+the odour of which made him almost faint with longing.  All this plenty
+around him--whilst he and Elsie were starving.  He hurried away, the
+wild animal in him prompting to a pounce upon the nearest table, to be
+followed by a bolt.  He knew his legs were swift, but there were too
+many people about and he would be sure to be caught.  Stealing, he
+remembered with a tingling of the shoulders, stood first in the old
+beggar's category of deeds for which one might get whipped.
+
+A thought struck him,--he would first locate the Governor's house, then
+return and try, by following the course he had taken the first day, to
+rediscover the dwelling of the charitable woman who kept the little
+shop.  But Rondebosch was on the other side of the mountain; would he be
+able to go there and back without food?  Well, there was nothing else to
+be done.  He would try it at all events.
+
+But after he had walked a few hundred yards his hunger got the better of
+him and he turned back and began to search for the woman's dwelling.  He
+reached the hotel with the wide stoep; from there he had no difficulty
+in reaching the store which the waiter had pointed out to him as the
+Governor's house.  After this, however, he could no more unravel his way
+among the unfamiliar lines of exactly-similar houses, than a bird could
+find its way through a labyrinth of mole-burrows.
+
+So the day drew to a close without Kanu obtaining any food.  His own
+agony of hunger had given place, for the time being, to a sick feeling
+of weakness; it was Elsie's plight that now filled his thoughts.  Food
+he must have, so he decided to steal the first edible thing he saw and
+trust to his swift running for escape.  The whip was only a contingency,
+albeit a dreadful one,--but the hunger was a horrible actuality.  Kanu
+made for the outskirts of the city and began to prowl about seeking for
+food to steal.
+
+In the valley between Table Mountain and the Lion's Head were the
+dwellings of a number of coloured people of the very lowest class.  Most
+of the dwellings were miserable huts built of sacking and other rubbish,
+and standing in small clearings made in the thick, primaeval scrub.  In
+the vicinity of some of these huts fowls were pecking about Kanu skirted
+the inhabited part of the valley, marking, with a view to possible
+contingencies, the huts near which fowls appeared to be most plentiful.
+In a path near a hut which stood somewhat distant from any others, the
+matchless eye of the Bushman discerned a well-grown brood of chickens,
+evidently just released from parental tutelage.  A swift glance showed
+him how he might, unobserved, get between them and the hut.  After
+worming his way through the scrub he emerged close to the unsuspicious
+poultry, into the midst of which he flung his stick, quick as lightning
+and with practised hand.  Two chickens lay struggling on the ground.
+The others fled homeward, with wild cacklings.
+
+Within the space of a couple of seconds Kanu had clutched the two
+unhappy fowls, wrung their necks and wrapped them up in his tattered
+kaross.  Then he sprang aside, ran for a few yards and dropped like a
+stone.  A man and a boy came rushing up the pathway and then commenced
+searching the thicket in every direction.  Once the man passed within a
+yard of the trembling Bushman, whose back began to tingle painfully.
+However the danger passed, so after a short time he crept along through
+the thicket to a safe distance, and then fled up to the mountain side to
+where he had left Elsie.
+
+Bitter was the poor child's disappointment when she heard that the
+Governor did not live in Cape Town after all.  However, Kanu was
+sanguine now of being able to locate the dwelling they had so long and
+so painfully sought for.
+
+Kanu soon lit a fire and cooked the chickens, which proved tender and
+toothsome.  The Bushman ate hardly anything but the entrails.  He lied
+freely to Elsie in regard to the manner in which he had come by the
+birds, and waxed nobly mendacious as to the amount of food which he
+pretended to have enjoyed during the day.
+
+Next morning Elsie's feet were still so much inflamed that she could
+hardly put them to the ground.  Kanu gave her the rest of the meat,--
+which, as the chickens had been but small to begin with--came to very
+little.  Then he bade her farewell, promising to be back as early in the
+afternoon as possible, and started on his way along the western flank of
+the mountain to Rondebosch.
+
+He crossed the high neck which connects the eminence known as "the
+Devil's Peak" with Table Mountain.  This name used then to cause great
+scandal to the Dutch colonists,--the term being an unconscious
+perversion by the English of the original name of "Duiven's," or
+"Dove's" Peak.  Then he descended the almost perpendicular gorge to the
+thickets behind Groot Schuur, and soon found himself in the straggling
+village of Rondebosch.
+
+It did not take him long to find the big house with the tall stone
+shafts before it, as described by the old beggar.  His eye caught a
+glint of scarlet through the trees,--yes, there were the two soldiers
+walking up and down, armed with guns from the muzzles of which long
+bright knives projected.
+
+However, it was best to make sure, so he took up a position fronting the
+house, but on the opposite side of the road.  He saw people going in and
+coming out, some in scarlet and some in wonderfully shiny black clothes.
+Several people passed by, but they all looked too important for him to
+accost.  At length a miserable-looking coloured woman hobbled by and he
+plucked up courage to address her:
+
+"What are those two men walking up and down for?"
+
+"Who are you that you don't know soldiers when you see them?"
+
+"Are these soldiers;--and what are they doing here?"
+
+"Taking care of the Governor, of course.  That is his house."
+
+At last.  Well, he had found what he wanted, and there was nothing to do
+now but to tell Elsie, and bring her out here as soon as her feet were
+better.
+
+But now that the excitement of the quest which had sustained him
+hitherto was over, a sudden agony of hunger gripped his vitals like a
+vice, and he felt that he must presently eat or die.  Elsie, too!  He
+had only left her a bite of cold chicken.  He would go and seek for more
+prey.  The whip was clean forgotten.  Hunger--supremely agonising
+hunger--held him by the throat.  He would go and seek for more fowls.
+There must be other places on the outskirts of the city where they were
+obtainable.  So Kanu started swiftly back along the main road to Cape
+Town, with all his faculties concentrated upon fowls and the stealing
+thereof.
+
+It was early afternoon when he reached the outskirts of the city.  The
+sun shone oppressively; there was hardly a soul to be seen.
+
+He passed a little shop, the proprietor of which,--a stout Malay, was
+apparently sleeping under a small awning hung over the front to protect
+the wares from the sun.  A barrow, piled with cakes and other
+comestibles, stood at his side.  They were queer, outlandish-looking
+eatables, such as Kanu had never seen before.  The sight and the smell
+made him wolfish.  He looked up and down the street; not a soul was in
+sight.  He tightened his left arm against his side and let a fold of the
+ragged kaross hang over it like a bag.  Then he shuffled his feet on the
+ground to test the slumber of the Malay, who gave no sign of observance.
+Then he clutched as many of the cakes as his hands would hold, placed
+them in his improvised bag, and hurried away on tip-toe.  Just
+afterwards a strong grasp compressed his neck and he was borne to the
+ground.  When he managed to turn his head he saw the enraged countenance
+of the Malay glaring down upon him.
+
+Kanu stood in the dock, looking like the terrified wild animal that he
+was, and pleaded "guilty" to stealing the cakes.  He had spent the night
+in a foetid cell with a number of other delinquents who had been scummed
+off the streets.  The case attracted no particular attention, being one
+of a class very common in, it may be supposed, every city.
+
+The prisoner took some pains to explain to the bench how hungry--how
+_very_ hungry he had been, and how he had found it impossible to pass by
+the food after he had seen and smelt it.
+
+The magistrate asked Kanu where he had come from and what he was doing
+in.  Cape Town.  The reply came in the form of a long, rambling
+statement which caused the minor officials to titter audibly, and the
+obvious untruthfulness of which caused His Worship, to frown with
+judicial severity.  He had, come--the Bushman said--from a great
+distance, but from what exact locality he begged to be excused from
+saying.  His business in Cape Town was "a big thing"; no less than an
+interview with the Governor.  If Mynheer would only let him go to seek a
+companion who was waiting for him, and who must, by this time, be very
+hungry indeed;--and would let him have a piece of bread--just one little
+piece of bread no bigger than his hand, he would promise to return at
+once.--And if Mynheer would let him and his companion be taken before
+the Governor, Mynheer would soon see that the story he told was true.
+
+Then he went on to say that he knew that he had done wrong in stealing
+the cakes, and consequently he deserved punishment, but Mynheer must
+please remember how hungry he had been, and how hungry his companion had
+been, and not give him the whip.  He had heard that "brown people" were
+whipped in Cape Town if they stole, which was quite right if they stole
+when they were not hungry.  He had never stolen before; he had only
+stolen this time because he could get nothing to eat, and had been
+unable to find the Governor.  Only two things he begged of Mynheer: to
+let him go to his companion with a little piece of bread;--she had had
+nothing to eat since yesterday morning, and must be very hungry now, and
+frightened, for she had been alone all night.  The other favour was that
+Mynheer might spare him the whip.
+
+By this time everyone in court,--except His Worship, who had no sense of
+humour,--was almost convulsed with merriment at the quaint and guileful
+fictions of the Bushman.  Where, wondered carelessly some of the more
+thoughtful, had this "_onbeschafte_" savage learnt to practise such
+artful hocus pocus.  It was, they thought, an interesting object lesson,
+as proving the essential and hopelessly-mendacious depravity of the
+Bushman race.
+
+His Worship was "down on" vagrancy in all its forms.  Probably, being
+responsible for the good order of the city, he had to be.  His official
+harangue in passing sentence was not long, nor,--with the exception of
+the last paragraph,--interesting, even to Kanu.  This last paragraph
+struck into the brain of the Bushman with a smart like that produced by
+one of the poisoned arrows of his own race, for it sentenced him to
+receive that whipping the dread of which had persistently haunted his
+waking and sleeping dreams.  In addition he was to be imprisoned for a
+week--the greater portion of which had to be spent upon spare diet.
+After this he had to leave the precincts of the city within twenty-four
+hours, on pain of a further application of the lash.
+
+Kanu, the Bushman thief, received his stripes dumbly, as a wild animal
+should; but the bitter physical agony which he underwent when the cruel
+lash cut through the skin of his emaciated body expressed itself in
+writhings and contortions which, the prison warders said (and they spoke
+from an extended experience), were funnier than any they had ever seen
+before.  The spare diet he did not so much mind, being well accustomed
+to that sort of thing.
+
+After the shock of his punishment, which had dulled every other feeling
+for the time, had somewhat passed away, Kanu realised that by this time
+Elsie must surely be dead, and he fell, accordingly, into bitter, if
+savage, tribulation.  But soon he found himself thinking, in quite a
+civilised way, that it was better, after all, that the blind child
+should be free from her sufferings.  Then Kanu turned his face to the
+wall of his cell and slept with inconsiderable waking intervals,
+throughout the rest of his period of durance.
+
+When he was released a throb almost of joy went through the Bushman's
+untutored breast.  Freedom, to the wild man, is as necessary as to the
+sea-mew.  He hurried from the gaol door and made his way up the side of
+the mountain to where he had left Elsie eight days before, expecting to
+find her lying white among the rocks, half-covered by her shining hair.
+
+Bushmen, everyone says, have no hearts,--yet a spasm contracted the
+throat of this Bushman as he neared the spot where he had left the blind
+girl, which, in the case of a civilised man, would have been attributed
+to an agony of grief.
+
+But no trace of Elsie could he see.  His keen, microscopic eye searched
+the ground for a sign, but none was visible.  The north-east wind had
+blown; the swift springing of vegetation had affected Nature's
+obliterative work--wiping away the faint traces of the tragedy from this
+small theatre as completely as Time, with the assistance of lichens,
+grass and a few others of Nature's busy legion, will finally obliterate
+man with all his works and pomps.
+
+No sign.--Stay,--there, floating on the slow, sweet stream of
+sun-buoyant air, quivered a yellow thread,--bright as materialised
+sunlight.  It hung from the bough of a shrub upon which bright,
+sweet-scented buds were struggling through between cruel-looking, black
+thorns, and miraculously getting the best of the struggle.  Kanu
+carefully disentangled the precious filament, rolled it up into a
+minute coil and put it into a little bag containing several
+namelessly-unpleasant charms, which hung by a strand of twisted sinew
+from his neck.
+
+Swiftly the Bushman examined every nook and cranny in the vicinity, but
+no other trace of the blind girl he had served so faithfully and
+unselfishly could be found.  Then his eyes began to swim with what in
+the case of a European would certainly have been called tears, and his
+throat tightened once more with the same sensation he had a few minutes
+previously experienced.
+
+Far away to the northward the great blue peaks of the Drakenstein glowed
+and pulsed in the sunshine, while their hollows were dyed a more
+wonderful purple than Tynan artificer ever took from the depths of the
+Mediterranean.  Beyond this range, albeit on the other side of an almost
+interminable series of other ranges, seemingly as impassable, lay the
+desert; and towards this Kanu the Bushman sighed his savage soul.
+
+One more look round--lest, haply he might have left some sign unread or
+some nook unsearched;--one more recurrence of the unaccountable (for a
+Bushman) sensation in his throat, and Kanu set his face to the North,
+and went forth for ever from the shadow of the dwelling-places of
+civilised men.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ELEVEN.
+
+ELSIE AND THE SATYRS.
+
+The long day drew to a close but Elsie, with the sweet steadfastness of
+a nature that had hardly ever known what it was to repine, did not feel
+impatient.  She knew that it would be impossible for her to go to
+Rondebosch until the following day, so she was content to sit in the
+mild sunlight, bathing her feet in the cool stream.
+
+The portion of cold chicken that remained she had divided into two, one
+of which she ate for breakfast.  When she knew from the coolness of the
+air that the sun had gone down, she ate the remainder.  When night came
+she wondered why Kanu had not arrived, and the wild thought that he
+might by some wonderful chance have seen the Governor and then gone
+straight off to procure her father's release lifted her heart for one
+moment's wild delight.  But she soon saw the impossibility of her
+imaginings, and her joy fell, broken-winged, to earth.  However, her
+spirits soon regained the former mean.  Fear she felt not; the only
+thing that had caused her terror was the mob of boys in the street of
+the city, but here, where Kanu had placed her, she felt quite safe.  To
+those who are blind from birth darkness harbours no more terror than
+day.
+
+Although the lovely scene which lay around her was cut off from her
+cognisance by the failure of her principal channel of sense, her
+remaining faculties had been so sharpened by the striving of the
+imprisoned individuality to apprehend its environment, that she might
+almost be said to have developed a special sense which those possessing
+sight have no idea of.  To Elsie the evening was full of beauty and for
+one short hour she was soothed in the lap of Peace.
+
+The faint, far-off murmur of the city stole up and seemed to cluster
+like a lot of echo-swallows against the sheer rock-wall that soared into
+its snow-white fleece of cloud above her head.  To her fine-strung ear
+they made music.  She wondered in what direction her father's prison
+lay.  Perhaps he had breathed the very air which now, full of the scents
+and ichor of the sea, gently stirred her locks.
+
+The dew-fall made everything damp; it was cold and she longed for a
+fire.  Why was Kanu so long in coming back?--Her mind searched in vain
+for an explanation.  Could it be possible, after all, that he had seen
+the Governor and then gone with the soldier and the great key to effect
+her father's release?  Even now he might be hurrying up the rugged path,
+under the faithful Bushman's guidance, to greet the beloved child who
+had dared, suffered and accomplished so much for his sake.  No, she
+reflected with a sigh, that was hardly to be hoped.  The Governor would,
+doubtless, want to see and talk to herself before taking any steps.
+Kanu was, after all, only a Bushman, and, although she knew how brave
+and honest and true he was, and how superior to his race, it was not to
+be expected that the Governor would recognise his good qualities at the
+very outset of their acquaintance.
+
+But where _was_ Kanu?  It was most extraordinary that he should have
+left her so long as this, all alone.  Surely he could not have forgotten
+that she had no food and no means of lighting a fire.
+
+It was now, she knew, very late, for the noises had died down and the
+city lay as silent as the grave.  She knew also that Kanu was not
+anywhere near.  Last evening her supersensitive ear had been able to
+detect his approaching footsteps long, long before he arrived.  She was
+now very hungry indeed and the penetrating dew had chilled her to the
+bone.  But she was accustomed to exposure and she did not suffer in this
+respect as another might have done.  She was crouched under the lee of a
+rock.  Drawing her knees up for the sake of warmth she shook her tresses
+out over her like a tent, and soon fell asleep.
+
+She awoke suddenly and started up with a wild cry, her every nerve
+tingling with horror.  From the krantz-ledges above her head were
+issuing strident shrieks and hoarse roarings.  In an instant she
+recognised the sounds:--they came from a troop of large, fierce,
+dog-faced baboons which had taken up their quarters on the face of the
+cliff.
+
+The baboons were having one of those noisy scuffles which, several times
+in the course of a night, invariably disturb an encampment of these
+animals.  Down the face of the cliff came bounding good-sized pebbles
+and even small rocks, dislodged by the struggling simians.  These
+thudded into the grass or crashed into the bushes close beside her.
+Seizing the short staff which she always carried, the terror-smitten
+child felt her course away from the vicinity of the cliff and began
+descending the mountain with stumbling steps.
+
+The sole and only terror which Elsie had felt on her native farm,--the
+dread of these animals,--returned upon her with irresistible force.  The
+Tanqua Valley was full of these monsters, whose hoarse roarings, heard
+from afar, haunted the dreams of her nervous childhood.  In seasons of
+drought they would sometimes rush in among a flock of sheep and tear
+open the stomachs of the young lambs with their powerful paws, for the
+sake of the newly-drunk milk.  To Elsie and her kind the baboon took the
+place of the dragon, the giant, and the gnome, around which cluster the
+terrors of northern childhood.
+
+Bruised, bleeding, and palpitating with horror, the poor little blind
+child stumbled on down the rough, brambly mountain side until she lost
+her footing and fell heavily over a ledge.  Then she swooned from the
+combined mental and physical shock, and for a time lay still in merciful
+unconsciousness.  When she revived she could not at first realise what
+had occurred; then the horror came back upon her like a flood, and she
+once more arose and staggered forward, groping before her with her
+stick.
+
+Then came another dreadful thought:--Kanu would not now know where to
+find her when he returned.  What was she to do?  She had dreaded the
+boys in the cruel, perplexing city--yet she felt that she could now fly
+to them for protection--if she only knew the way.  And Kanu might--the
+thought brought a momentary gleam of cheerfulness--possibly track her
+course down the mountain side, but--if she once reached the streets he
+would never be able to trace her.  No,--she had better remain somewhere
+on the mountain.--But the baboons--thus the poor, over-laden little
+brain reeled along the mazes of a labyrinth of frightful alternatives.
+
+Now her alert senses told her that the day was breaking and the sweet
+influences of the dawn brought a momentary relief from the worst of her
+imaginary terrors.  She thanked God with happy tears for the returning
+of the blessed day.  But almost immediately afterwards the ripple of
+relief was swamped by a returning tide of dismay.
+
+Even at this late day the baboons of Table Mountain sometimes assume a
+very threatening attitude to persons rambling alone in the more
+unfrequented spots, but in the early days of the Cape settlement these
+great simians were far more daring.  It was no uncommon thing for them
+to raid the vineyards and gardens on the outskirts of the city in the
+early morning,--and this is what they were preparing to do on the
+occasion of Elsie's great travail.  At the first streak of light they
+began to descend from the krantzes and spread in skirmishing order over
+the slopes beneath.  The centre of the scattered column headed direct
+for the spot where Elsie lay cowering, and it was the guttural bark by
+which the animal that discovered her announced the presence of a human
+being to the others, that gave her such a redoubled shock of dread.
+
+She tried to move, but her strength failed her; so she crept under a
+bush and lay there, crouched and quaking.  On right and left she could
+hear the harsh signals of the sentinels, from flank to flank of the
+long-extended troop.  Far and near she could hear the stones being
+rolled over as the baboons searched for scorpions and other vermin.
+
+She heard a rustling close to her, and then a guttural grunt of mingled
+curiosity and surprise.  The horrors of the situation struck her rigid,
+and she ceased, for a few seconds, to breathe.  The baboon was now close
+to her, wondering no doubt, as to who and what she was.  Then, with a
+movement which combined the elements of a slap and a scratch, the
+creature drove its hairy paw into her face.
+
+With a long, shrill shriek Elsie sprang to her feet and fled down the
+steep slope.  A thorny shrub caught and held her dress fast.  She
+thought that one of the monsters had overtaken and captured her, and she
+fell to the ground and lay huddled in a swoon that was very nigh to
+death.
+
+The fruit-orchard at the back of the du Plessis' dwelling had on several
+occasions suffered severely from the depredations of the baboons.  Thus,
+whenever these brutes were heard roaring and coughing on the mountain
+side--which usually happened in the very early morning, it was customary
+for all the male members of the household to turn out in a body, to
+repel the attack.
+
+On this occasion the slaves, armed with whatever weapons could be
+hurriedly laid hands on, and headed by the old white-headed gardener,
+who carried a blunderbuss of ancient make, rushed out to protect the
+fruit Mr du Plessis and his two daughters joined in the sortie a few
+minutes afterwards.  The girls enjoyed this sort of thing very much, and
+the cry of "baviaan" would turn them out of bed earlier, and more
+quickly, than anything else.  The sensation of "creeps," which any
+enterprise involving a small tincture of imaginary danger brings, is
+dear to the youthful female breast.
+
+On the present occasion the enemy made even less show of resistance than
+usual.  Driven back in disorder, they retreated to the mountain krantzes
+which were inaccessible to all but themselves, hoarsely defiant and
+threatening what they would do next time.
+
+The morning was delightful as only an early morning can be when listless
+Spring coquettes with impatient Summer under a cloudless, calm, and
+southern sky; so Mr du Plessis and his daughters decided to spend some
+of the time which must elapse before breakfast would be ready in
+strolling over the flower-strewn mountain slope.  The lovely bay lay
+like a white-fringed purple robe cast down to earth from the couch of
+some regal goddess; in the deep, deep hollows of the Drakenstein the
+shattered remnants of the host of conquered night were cowering;
+overhead the scarred crags of Table Mountain lent, by force of contrast,
+a splendid foil to the softness of the rest of the landscape.
+
+They had left the footpath and were wandering among the dew-bejewelled
+bushes.  Suddenly, with one accord they all stood still; before them lay
+what appeared to be the dead body of a young girl, fallen upon its face.
+
+Mr du Plessis stepped forward and bent over the pallid form.  He
+ascertained that it still contained life, and he signed to the two girls
+to approach.
+
+They turned the unconscious frame over upon its back and placed the
+slack limbs in an easy position.  The face was untouched, but the poor
+hands had been sorely torn by thorns.  The lips were almost bloodless
+and the whole form as cold as the earth it lay on.  The hair, sadly
+tangled, glowed in the sunshine like live gold.
+
+"The blind girl we saw with the Bushman," said Helena, in an awed
+whisper.
+
+"Yes," said Mr du Plessis,--"there has been some foul play here.  You
+girls rub her body as hard as you can and loosen her dress at the
+throat; I will run and send Ranzo and one of the boys with a
+basket-chair."
+
+It was not long before the chair arrived, carried by two strong slaves.
+Elsie was tenderly lifted from the cold earth and carried down to the
+cottage, where she was soon laid upon a soft, warm bed.  Her damp
+clothes were removed and warm wraps substituted.  The doctor had been
+sent for at once, but in the meantime Mrs du Plessis poured a hot
+cordial down her throat.  This soon caused a glow of warmth to spread
+over the almost pulseless body.
+
+Soon the doctor arrived and ordered that the patient should be laid in a
+warm bath.  This caused her to revive considerably.  When her eyes
+opened it seemed as if they were filled with the pain of the whole
+world.  After swallowing a little nourishment she fell into a swoon-like
+sleep, which lasted all day and into the middle of the night.
+
+When Elsie awoke it was to delirium of the most painful kind.  Ever and
+anon she would shriek with terror and try to spring from the bed.  This
+lasted for several days, until the doctor feared brain-fever.  However,
+she once more fell asleep, and lay for days like a faintly-breathing
+statue.  She was wakened now and then and given nourishment, which she
+mechanically swallowed,--immediately afterwards sank back to deepest
+sleep.
+
+The strange story of the finding of the blind girl with the wonderful
+hair had in the meantime spread abroad, and the circumstance aroused
+general interest.  Many now recalled having seen the strange pair
+wandering up and down the streets upon their hopeless quest, and
+regretted, too late, that they had not rendered assistance.  Public
+feeling,--that mad perverter of probabilities,--was very much aroused
+against Kanu, and had that unhappy Bushman been caught it would have
+gone hard with him.  However, Kanu, with his savage equivalent for the
+emotion of grief, was straining every nerve to get as far away from
+civilisation as possible, bent on hiding his suspected head in the
+depths of the uttermost desert.
+
+Many were the visitors at the cottage on the mountain slope during
+Elsie's illness.  When the child grew better a favoured few were allowed
+to take a peep into the dimly-lighted room where, upon a bed as white as
+snow, the pallid, pathetically-beautiful image of tragic suffering lay.
+The wonderful hair had been carefully combed; it flowed like a golden
+cataract over the headrail of the bedstead.  When the light of a candle
+shone upon it through the gloom of the darkened room the beholders
+marvelled at a depth and richness of colour such as they had never
+before thought possible.
+
+Up from the vaults of blank unconsciousness floated the mind of the
+blind girl until she became cognisant of her immediate surroundings; but
+the past remained to her an utter blank.  Bit by bit she recovered the
+faculty of speech.  It would be more correct to say that she re-acquired
+it, for she picked up words from those around her almost as an infant
+does--only more rapidly and intelligently.  Her sweet, equable
+disposition had not altered.  Thus, she began to fill in the obliterated
+pages of her mind with serene unconsciousness.  She never laughed, but a
+strain of music, a sweet scent, or a soft touch from the hands she had
+learnt to love for their constant kindness would bring to her pale face
+the light of a rare smile, and flood it with a soft colour that was good
+to behold.
+
+Thus blind Elsie, after her sore travail and disappointment, drifted, a
+derelict, into a harbour of safety and loving-kindness.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWELVE.
+
+ELSIE'S AWAKENING.
+
+Four years had come and gone; four times had the winter rains from the
+hidden Antarctic floated up to the storm-smitten shores of that
+continent over which the wings of Ancient Mystery still brood, and made
+sweet the ways of Spring.
+
+The cottage still stood on the slope of Table Mountain but it was no
+longer alone; other dwellers of the city had selected sites and built
+near it.  Moreover, it could not so readily be seen from a distance as
+formerly, for the reason that the bowering trees had enviously stretched
+forth their boughs around it.
+
+Mr and Mrs du Plessis had been tenderly dealt with by Time; being young
+in heart they still knew youth, and the lady's French vivacity remained
+unimpaired.  Gertrude and Helena had grown into young women comely to
+see, and the path leading to their dwelling was often trodden by the
+feet of the young men of the city and the officers of the garrison.  The
+suit of a young minister of the Dutch Reformed Church had found favour
+with Gertrude.  He had graduated in Leyden in a distinguished manner
+three years previously.  Mr Brand and Gertrude were engaged and meant to
+be married in the early part of the ensuing year.
+
+The greatest change was, however, to be seen in Elsie.  She was about
+seventeen years of age and as beautiful as a lily.  Tall and slight, her
+sweet face marble-pale, her deep eyes fringed with long, brown lashes
+and her wonderful hair full of amber hues mingled with the golden tints
+of dawn, the blind girl who dwelt in darkness was the sunshine of the
+household.
+
+Although her mind was still a blank so far as events that had occurred
+previous to her waking in the home of her protector were concerned, her
+intellect otherwise was quite unimpaired.  Her memory had regained its
+old strength, and once more she became remarkable for never forgetting
+anything she experienced.  She was quite without fear except of the
+baboons, the barking of which upon the mountain side always made her
+tremble.  It was this circumstance which led the old doctor who attended
+the household to express his belief that she would one day recover her
+memory.  She was called Agatha by the du Plessis after numerous attempts
+to elicit her name had failed.
+
+The Reverend Philip Brand, Gertrude's _fiance_, was an earnest and a
+muscular Christian.  He was a man who held quite original views upon
+most questions; one peculiarity of his being that he rather preferred
+the society of the very bad to that of the correspondingly good.  The
+visitation of the unfortunates condemned to serve in chains at the
+quarries on Robben Island was a self-imposed branch of his duties which
+he took the greatest interest in.
+
+"I have recently come in contact," he said one day to Gertrude, "with a
+very remarkable man.  He is a convict at Robben Island,--a man named van
+der Walt.  He tried to murder his brother, and was sentenced to ten
+years imprisonment in consequence."
+
+"Yes;--and why does he specially interest you?"
+
+"Well,--'tis a very curious thing;--you know that I am apt to take a
+liking to reprobates; this man's influence upon me is, however, very
+strange.  Whenever I have been talking to him I come away with the
+impression that there is some mistake,--that he is God's minister and I
+am the criminal."
+
+"I wish I could meet him."
+
+"I wish you could.  I can hardly describe him.--The man is as humble as
+Christ himself, and is always, without the least sign of cringing,
+grateful for the least attention.  He does not talk religion at all; in
+fact he tries rather to avoid the subject, but he continually endeavours
+to enlist my help towards getting favours granted for the other
+prisoners.  He has never, so far as I can make out, asked for anything
+for himself."
+
+"Do you know the particulars of his crime? his story ought to be
+interesting."
+
+"I only know a few of the bare facts.  It appears that he and his
+brother--they lived far up country, near the Roggeveld--had been
+quarrelling for years.  One day they met in the veld, and this one shot
+the other with his own gun,--tried to murder him, in fact Murder or no
+murder, something always seems to say to me when we meet: `That man is a
+better Christian than you.'"
+
+"Has he been long in prison?"
+
+"About eight years.  They tell me that he has never been known during
+all that time to disobey an order or to grumble at anything.  His wife
+died five years ago, and just afterwards his little daughter, whom he
+loved better than anyone else, disappeared.  They say his health
+afterwards broke down completely for a time, and his hair and beard
+turned from jet black to pure white within a few months."
+
+"Poor old man,--why don't they let him out if he has suffered so much
+and has become so good?"
+
+"They are talking of asking the Governor to commute the last year of his
+sentence.  I shall do my best to have the idea carried out, but I had
+better not move in the matter openly, because all say I am already too
+much on the side of the convicts, and I am no longer listened to when I
+intercede for them."
+
+Summer had not yet come, but its approach was making itself felt from
+afar.  The du Plessis' were spending the day on the western side of the
+peninsula, where the South Atlantic tides, steel-grey and cold, sweep
+past the black, broken rocks.  To landward the bastioned turrets known
+as the "Twelve Apostles" soared into a blue sky; from seaward the
+rollers were thundering up, in front of a steady north-west breeze.
+
+Elsie had been placed in a comfortable situation such as she loved--safe
+above the reach of the moving waters, but where faint fragrant whiffs of
+spray might now and then reach her, and where the generous sunshine
+prevented her from feeling chilled.  She loved sometimes to be left
+alone thus, so the others wandered away.  Soon she fell into a deep
+sleep.
+
+When the strollers returned they were alarmed at the change which had
+taken place in the blind girl.  She was sitting straight up; her face
+was drawn, her lips were parted; she breathed with quick, husky gasps
+and her eyes blazed.  The two girls ran up and put their arms around
+her; then she shrieked loudly, and became almost convulsed.  But she
+soon became calmer under their soothing words and touch.
+
+"Kanu,--are you here?" she uttered.
+
+"We are here," replied Helena, gently--"Gertrude and I.  What is the
+matter.--What frightened you?"
+
+"Oh,--how long have I been sleeping.--Where is Kanu?  Where am I?"
+
+They noticed that she spoke in quite a different tone to her usual one,
+and in an uncouth idiom they had never heard from her before.
+
+"Hush, dear," said Helena, soothingly.  She guessed what had happened.
+The doctor had told her that an awakening of the girl's dormant memory
+might happen at any time.--"Hush,--do not trouble to think just now.
+You will remember it all by and by."
+
+Helena drew the blind, frightened face down upon her generous breast,
+whilst Gertrude softly stroked the rigid hand which had seized one of
+hers with such a convulsive grasp as caused her acute pain.  The blind
+girl's brain was reeling perilously near to madness.  Like a flood came
+the memory of her journey and its purpose--of the misery of
+disappointment, and the terror of the baboons.  Her mind began anew at
+the flight from Elandsfontein, and retraced every painful step of the
+journey which came to such a tragic close in the inhospitable streets of
+the city.  The whole pageant went through her consciousness in a
+whirling phantasmagoria.
+
+When she reached that stage of her adventures wherein she left the
+dwelling of the kind old coloured woman, she instinctively passed her
+hand over her knees to feel if she still wore the dress which had been
+lent her then.  Again she ascended the rugged slopes of Table Mountain,
+with her ears filled with the horrid shouts of the persecuting boys.
+The long-waited-for Kanu seemed so imminent that she bent her ear to
+listen for his expected step in the sound of the rocking surf.  Then her
+terror of the baboons returned upon her like a hurricane sweeping
+everything away in fury; she started up with a shriek and tried to rush
+away.
+
+"Oh God,--the baboons.  Kanu--Kanu."
+
+"Hush--hush, dear," said the soothing voice of Helena; "you are safe
+with us; nothing can hurt you.  Feel--we are holding you safely."
+
+The sudden rupture of the cells in the blind girl's brain, within which
+the terrors of that dire morning of four years back were pent, was like
+the breaking of the Seventh Seal.  The shock almost unseated her reason.
+However, she gradually came to realise that she was with friends, whose
+tender touch brought comfort and a sense of safety.  For the moment the
+last four years of her life were as effectually blotted out as though
+they had never been.  Then, as a tortured sea gradually glasses over
+when the storm-cloud has passed on, although it yet heaves with silent
+unrest, her mind began to calm down and the recollection of more recent
+events to dawn upon the verge of her consciousness.
+
+"But where is Kanu?  Why did he not come back to me?"
+
+"Was Kanu the Bushman who led you about?" asked Helena, gently.
+
+"Kanu left me on the mountain and went to find out where the Governor
+lived.--My father--How long ago is it--Where have I been?"
+
+"What is your father's name and where does he live?" asked Gertrude.
+
+"My father is in prison, but he is innocent, and only Kanu and I know
+the truth.  We came to tell the Governor, so that he might let my father
+out."
+
+"Come, Agatha,--let us go back to mother and tell her."
+
+"My name is not Agatha,--my name is Elsie,--Elsie van der Walt."
+
+The two girls looked at each other in surprise, recalling the name of
+the prisoner in whom Mr Brand was so much interested, and of whom he had
+spoken several times.  After gently assisting Elsie to arise they led
+her to where the other members of the party were waiting.  Helena then
+drew her mother and Mr Brand aside and told them of what had occurred.
+
+"Find out her father's Christian name," said the latter; "if it is
+Stephanus you may safely tell her that she will be taken to him
+to-morrow.  I will get permission to-night and arrange to have a boat
+ready in the morning."
+
+"Elsie," said Helena, passing her arm over the bewildered girl's
+shoulder, "is your father's name Stephanus van der Walt?"
+
+"Yes--yes,--that is his name.  Is he still in prison?"
+
+"He is still in prison, but he is well.  You will be taken to him
+to-morrow."
+
+The light of a great happiness seemed to radiate from Elsie's face.  At
+last--at last--The compensation for the long travail was about to be
+hers.  And he--the innocent and long-suffering, would be freed from his
+bonds.
+
+The eventful day was drawing to a close, so preparations for the return
+homeward were at once made.  Mr Brand started on foot for Cape Town, by
+a short cut.  He meant to call upon the magistrate at once and obtain a
+written permission to visit Robben Island and see the prisoner on the
+following day.
+
+As the party drove homeward Elsie was wrapped in a trance of utter
+happiness.  The lovely day had ripened into a sunset-flower of gorgeous
+and surpassing richness, and, as the pony drew the little carriage up
+the hill-side to the peaceful home among the trees, its rarest light
+seemed to be intensified in and reflected from the radiant face of the
+blind girl.
+
+Elsie spoke no more that night, and the others made no attempt to
+disturb her blissful silence.  In the middle of the night Mrs du Plessis
+arose, lit a candle and stepped softly to the room where the blind girl
+slept alone.  She was dreaming, and her lips were parted in a smile.
+Her long, brown lashes lay darkly fringed upon her cheeks, her face and
+throat had lost their marble pallor and were faintly tinged with the
+most delicate rose.  Adown her sides and completely concealing her arms
+flowed the double cataract of her peerless hair.  Across her bosom and
+concealing her clasped hands, the streams coalesced into a golden billow
+which, as it heaved to her breath showed full of changing lights.
+
+The kind woman gazed, spell-bound, until happy tears came and blurred
+her vision.  Then, with thanks to the Power which had sent this angel to
+her household upon her lips, she noiselessly withdrew.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
+
+FATHER AND DAUGHTER.
+
+Stephanus Van Der Walt had entered the door of his prison with the firm
+conviction that his God--the just and mighty God of the Psalms that he
+knew so well--had laid this burthen upon him for his great
+transgressions.  In the light of his changed heart all the provocation
+which Gideon had given him seemed to melt away like snowflakes in the
+sunshine, whilst his own contributions to the long-drawn-out quarrel
+waxed larger and blacker the more he looked at them.
+
+The exaltation of spirit which buoyed him up when he received his
+sentence had never flagged.  He gloried in his sufferings.  His only
+prayer was that God might not visit his crimes upon his innocent
+children,--that Elsie, his little blind child, might have the shield of
+divine protection extended over her helplessness--that Marta, the wife
+whom he had neglected, and Sara, his elder daughter who stood on the
+threshold of womanhood, might find the wind of adversity tempered to
+their need.
+
+When he heard of Marta's death he bent his head anew in bitter
+self-reproach.  He felt he had left the weak woman whom he had vowed to
+cherish alone and unprotected,--disgraced and sorrowful.  Up till now he
+had been happy--happier than he had felt for years, for his heart was no
+longer the home of torturing hate.  He felt that this later misfortune
+was sent to chasten him,--a thing which his imprisonment had failed to
+do.  He took his wife's death as a sign of the wrath of the Almighty,
+and he winced at the soreness of the stroke.
+
+But when, a year later, the loss of his little blind daughter became
+known to Stephanus, his bones seemed to turn to water and light died out
+of his life.  It was the uncertainty of her fate which made the blow so
+terrible.  Month by month would he write letters asking for news and
+suggesting places to be searched.  Had her body only been found it would
+have brought some consolation.  But no--God's wrath was still sore
+against him.  It was his perfect trust in God's justice that saved him
+from despair.  He had no hope that Elsie was alive; God, he firmly
+believed, had taken her to himself, and had left her fate uncertain so
+as to punish her father, who was the greatest of sinners.
+
+His health nearly broke down under the strain.  However, his sublime
+faith triumphed in time--he bent his back to the sore stroke and the
+soreness grew less.
+
+Stephanus was employed with the ordinary convict gang in the
+stone-quarries upon Robben Island.  For the first few years he had
+worked in chains.  Afterwards his good conduct had attracted so much
+remark that he was freed from his fetters and allowed several privileges
+which, however, he always tried to pass on to his fellow-convicts.
+
+Whenever any of the others fell sick, it was Stephanus who would
+tirelessly nurse them, night and day.  He had even offered on one
+occasion to receive corporal punishment to which another prisoner had
+been sentenced, but this, of course, the authorities would not allow.
+
+Since his prostration consequent upon the news of Elsie's disappearance
+Stephanus had not been asked to do any labour in the quarries.
+Moreover, he had not been forced to cut his hair or beard of late years.
+These were snow-white and of considerable length, and, combined with
+his upright figure, strongly marked features, and keen but kindly eyes,
+gave him that appearance we are accustomed to associate with the Hebrew
+prophets filled with the fire of inspiration.
+
+An early breakfast was hardly over at the du Plessis' home next morning,
+before Mr Brand appeared, armed with permission for himself and Elsie to
+visit the convict van der Walt.  They drove down to the wharf, where
+they found a boat awaiting them.  The day was clear and bracing and the
+stout boat flew before the south-east wind across the heaving welter of
+Table Bay.
+
+Although Elsie had never been on the sea before, she felt neither alarm
+nor inconvenience.  In the course of a couple of hours the keel grated
+on the shingle and the passengers were carried ashore through the surf.
+
+Her impatience had given place to a feeling of calm, and she paced up
+the pathway to the prison without the least appearance of agitation.
+Leaving her in charge of the wife of one of the officials, Mr Brand
+went to prepare Stephanus for the great surprise.
+
+Elsie's beauty became almost unearthly when she was led up the stone
+steps, at the other side of which she knew her father was waiting to
+receive her.  She entered a flagged passage and then was led to a
+doorway on the right.  The door opened, and she stepped into the room
+where her father was waiting.  He, with a wild look of astonishment and
+almost incredulity, clasped her in his arms.  The door was gently
+closed, leaving the two alone together.
+
+Some time elapsed before any words were spoken.  Stephanus drew Elsie
+upon his knee and she passed her white hands over his worn face in the
+old enquiring way.  The wrinkled lines that had been ploughed deep by
+sorrow were traced by her fingers, one by one.  Then she clasped her
+arms around his neck and laid her face against his.
+
+Stephanus could hardly bring himself to believe, at first, that this
+beautiful and daintily dressed young woman was the roughly-clad and
+unkempt little girl he had parted from so long ago.  The rest of mind
+and body she had enjoyed,--the calm and wholesome life she had led
+during the past few years had blotted out the traces of the hardships
+she had undergone, and had fostered her physical development.  The
+serenity of her spirit had stamped itself upon her beautiful face and
+she had imbibed the refinement of her surroundings as though to the
+manner born.
+
+When, at length, her speech came, and her father learnt, bit by bit, all
+she had endured for his sake, his tears fell fast.  But for her the
+bitterness of the past only enhanced the happiness of the present.  Even
+when he laid a charge upon her, which almost seemed to take away the
+true value of all she had suffered for his sake, she did not attempt to
+repine.
+
+"God laid this punishment upon me," said Stephanus, "and it is His will
+that I should bear it to the end."
+
+"But when I tell them what I heard they will surely set you free."
+
+"My child,--God does not smite without knowing where and how the stripes
+will fall."
+
+"But you did not mean to shoot Uncle Gideon, and he knew it when he
+spoke at your trial."
+
+"My child,--you have been brave for my sake, and we will soon be happy
+together once more.  I lay this charge upon you:--that you go back to
+the farm,--to your uncle's house, and wait for me there.  Moreover, that
+you say not a word to anyone of what you know.  If God wants this
+revealed He will reveal it in His own way."
+
+Elsie no longer questioned her father's decision.  It was agreed between
+them that as soon as arrangements could be made she was to return to
+Elandsfontein, and there await her father's release.
+
+Elsie and Mr Brand slept at the house of the Superintendent of the
+Convict Station that night, and returned to the mainland next morning.
+
+There was grief and dismay in the du Plessis' household when it became
+known that Elsie was about to take her departure.  It was as though a
+child of their own were leaving.  They tried every persuasive argument
+to detain her, but all were of no avail.  It was pointed out that if she
+remained in Cape Town she would be near her father and could return with
+him after his release.  But his will to her was law, and her
+determination was not to be shaken.
+
+A letter was written to Gideon apprising him of the fact that his niece
+had been found, and another to Uncle Diederick, asking him to come and
+fetch Elsie with his tent-wagon and a team of Stephanus' oxen.  In due
+course a reply was received, to the effect that Gideon was absent on a
+hunting trip, and that Uncle Diederick would start for Cape Town in the
+course of a few days, accompanied by Elsie's cousin Adrian.
+
+Elsie had begged that enquiry should be made as to whether Kanu had
+returned to the farm, but nothing had been seen or heard of him there.
+This was, of course, a very fortunate circumstance for the Bushman.  Had
+he ever been found and recognised, it is to be feared that a short
+shrift and a round bullet would have been his portion.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
+
+ADRIAN AND JACOMINA.
+
+Aletta, who had mentally and physically become grey like her
+surroundings, like a tree growing in a damp and dark corner which has
+long since given up the attempt to shine and burgeon like its fellows
+that rejoice in the sunlight--received the news of Elsie's having been
+found with but a faint shock of surprise and satisfaction.  Her
+perceptions had become dulled by the woe-laden years.  Sara had, some
+two years previously, married a young farmer from an adjoining district.
+
+Uncle Diederick was glad of the opportunity of visiting Cape Town; he
+had heard of some wonderful new discoveries in the drug line, and he
+wanted to advance professionally with the times.  His farming on joint
+behalf of himself and Stephanus had prospered.  He felt that when his
+(at present) sleeping partner should be released, he, Uncle Diederick,
+would be able to build himself another "hartebeeste house" of ample
+proportions and sumptuous style, and devote his energies exclusively to
+the exercise of that healing art which his whole soul loved.
+
+Adrian had--being of a careful and frugal nature--begun acquiring stock
+when still very young.  This had increased considerably, owing to a long
+series of excellent seasons and the exercise of careful management.
+Thus, he had recently found himself quite rich enough to start farming
+on his own account.  When, however, he mooted this contingency with his
+father, Gideon at once offered him a full partnership in the farm as a
+going concern, leaving him the unrestricted management and only
+stipulating for the supply of teams of oxen and relays of horses for use
+on the hunting trips upon which he now spent by far the greater
+proportion of his time.  Adrian at once closed with the offer.
+
+Whilst Uncle Diederick was making preparations for his trip the thought
+struck Adrian that the present might prove a good opportunity for him to
+visit that city which he had never yet seen.  He felt that not alone
+could he make the journey pay its expenses, but that a handsome profit
+might be won by taking down a load of produce and bringing back another
+of supplies.  So he overhauled his wagon, packed it with ostrich
+feathers and hides and then sent over to tell Uncle Diederick of his
+intention.
+
+Uncle Diederick had arranged to start on the third day following.
+Adrian's notification came in the form of a message sent through a
+Hottentot who was directed to enquire as to the hour of Uncle
+Diederick's intended departure, so that the wagon might arrive at the
+spot where the two roads from the respective homesteads met, at the same
+time.  Up to this it had been understood that Jacomina was to remain
+behind and attend to any patients who might turn up.
+
+"Pa," said that artless damsel, at supper, "it will be very lonely here
+while you are away."
+
+A quizzical expression crinkled over the withered-apple-like visage of
+Uncle Diederick.  Otherwise he impassively went on with his meal.
+
+"Yes,--and I have never seen Cape Town.  Besides Elsie will be very
+lonely on the road if there is not another girl to talk to and look
+after her."
+
+After she had obtained her father's consent Jacomina began at once
+making preparations for her trip.  Her best frock was taken from the box
+and thoroughly overhauled, her smartest _cappie_ and her newest
+_veldschoens_ were laid ready for the morrow.  A brooch of old
+workmanship and some other trinkets which had drifted into Uncle
+Diederick's coffers in the course of trade, and thence been annexed by
+his daughter as part of her share in the profits, were examined and
+judiciously selected from.
+
+Next day Adrian was astonished, elated and embarrassed to find Jacomina,
+resplendent in what passed, locally, for finery, sitting throned upon
+Uncle Diederick's wagon box when the wagons met at the appointed spot.
+
+As a matter of fact Adrian's shyness had grown with his passion until
+each had reached a pitch of tragic intensity.  He had often ridden over
+to Uncle Diederick's homestead with full and valiant intentions of
+declaring his love, but invariably his courage had failed at the last
+moment Jacomina had been at her wits' end to bring him to the point of
+proposing which, she knew perfectly well, he was longing to do.  She had
+tried various ways and means, but all had failed.  When she became cold
+he sank into gloomy despondency and moped away by himself.  If she grew
+tender he seemed to dissolve in nervousness and grew as shy as a young
+girl.  Once, she tried flirtation with another, for the purpose of
+arousing jealousy, but the effect was alarming.  Adrian went without
+food or sleep for several days and rode about the country like one
+demented.
+
+The obvious way to arrange matters would have been to get Uncle
+Diederick to intervene.  This, however, in spite of many direct hints
+from Jacomina he had declined to undertake.
+
+In the days we tell of no marriage could be solemnised in the Cape
+Colony unless the parties had previously appeared before the matrimonial
+court in Cape Town.  It is an historical although almost incredible fact
+that in the early days of the present century couples wishing to marry
+had to come to the metropolis for the purpose from the most distant
+parts of the Colony.
+
+Now, in the tender but astute soul of Jacomina a bright and happy
+thought had been born.  Like the birth of Athene was the issue of this
+fully equipped resolve that stood before Jacomina in sudden and dazzling
+completeness.  Adrian was to accompany her and her father to Cape
+Town,--she would induce him to propose on the way down and then there
+would be no difficulty in leading him up to the marrying point.  He was
+of full age; she was accompanied by her father.  There was no reason why
+the wedding should not take place at once, and thus save them all the
+necessity for another trip.
+
+Adrian's shyness did not diminish during the journey.  At each outspan
+Jacomina exercised all her faculties to shine as a cook.  He shewed by
+his appetite that he deeply appreciated the results, but he got no
+farther than this.  With her own deft hands would Jacomina mix Adrian's
+well-known quantity of milk and sugar with his coffee, and then pass him
+the cup which he would receive so tremblingly that the contents were in
+danger.
+
+The skin bag of rusks made so crisp and light that they would melt
+instantaneously and deliciously in coffee or milk--the jar of pickled
+"_sassatyes_,"--hanks of "_bultong_" and other delicacies would be
+produced from the wagon-chest at each outspan and, if Adrian's passion
+might be gauged by his appetite, he was, indeed, deeply enamoured.
+
+But Jacomina was at her wits' end,--her lover would not declare himself,
+do what she might.  One day, however, some difficulty arose with the
+gear of Adrian's wagon, so that off Uncle Diederick started alone, its
+owner's intention being to wait for his travelling companion at the next
+outspan place, where water and pasturage were known to be good.  Uncle
+Diederick, as was his wont, fell asleep shortly after a start had been
+made.  Jacomina sat at the opening of the vehicle behind, gazing back
+along the road in the direction of where she had left her lover.
+
+It was a drowsy day; a faint haze brooded over the land; not a breath
+stirred the air, faint with the scent of the yellow acacia blooms.  The
+road was deep with heavy sand, through which the oxen slowly and
+noiselessly ploughed.
+
+A small, bush--brimming _kloof_ was crossed.  Through it sped a small
+stream, plashing over a rocky bar into a pool around which nodded a
+sleepy forest of ferns.  Jacomina put her head out of the back of the
+tent.  Then she sprang from the back of the wagon and went to examine
+the grot.  She found a flat ledge, out of range of the spray, which made
+a most convenient seat, so she sate herself down and contemplated the
+scene.
+
+Jacomina liked the scenery so much that she determined to stay for a few
+minutes, and then follow the retreating wagon.  Anon she thought she
+would wait a little longer and get Adrian to give her a seat as he came
+past.  The Hottentot driver had seen her dismount, so her father would
+know that she had not fallen off and got hurt, at all events.
+
+She sat among the ferns for a good half-hour before she heard the shouts
+of the driver urging on the labouring team.  Then the wagon laboured
+through the _kloof_, and Jacomina peered through the ferns as it passed
+her.
+
+Adrian was walking behind the wagon, with long, slow strides and bent
+head.  Jacomina was just about to arise and call out to him when he
+lifted his face at the sound of the plashing water, hesitated for a few
+seconds, and then stepped towards the grot.
+
+Jacomina knew, instinctively, that the hour she had long hoped for had
+come; that her lover was at length to be caught in the toils which she
+had, half-unwittingly, set for his diffident feet,--and the knowledge
+filled her with a feeling of bashfulness to which she had hitherto been
+a stranger.  Thus, when Adrian walked heavily through the fern and
+almost touched her dress before he perceived her, she felt covered with
+confusion.
+
+Adrian started as though he had seen a ghost.  Jacomina lifted a
+blushing face and gave him an instantaneous glance from her bright
+eyes--made brighter now by a suspicion of tears.  Then she bent her face
+forward upon her hands and began to sob.
+
+Adrian was bewildered.  This was something he had never thought the
+matter-of-fact Jacomina capable of.  Something must be very wrong
+indeed.  But he felt no longer awe, and his shyness was swept away in a
+tide of pity.  There was room on the ledge for two; Adrian sat down next
+to the distressed damsel and endeavoured to comfort her.
+
+"What is it, then, Jacomyntje,--has your Pa been scolding you?"
+
+Jacomina nearly gave herself away by indignantly repudiating the bare
+notion of her succumbing to anybody's scolding, but she remembered
+herself in time.  After a partial recovery she was seized by another
+paroxysm of sobs, in the course of which she pressed one hand across her
+eyes and allowed the other to droop, limply, to her side.  No observer
+of human nature will be in doubt as to which hand it was she let droop.
+
+Adrian, after a moment's hesitation, nervously lifted the hand and
+pressed it slightly.  As it was not withdrawn he increased the pressure.
+The sobbing calmed down somewhat, but the head remained bowed in an
+apparent abandon of hope.
+
+"What is it, Jacomina; tell me why you are weeping."
+
+"Ach, Adrian,--I am so unhappy."
+
+This was getting no farther forward.  The sobbing again recurred, and
+the fingers of the sufferer took a tight grasp of those of the consoler.
+Then the afflicted form swayed so helplessly that Adrian felt bound to
+support it with his arm, and in a moment the head of Jacomina reposed
+quietly upon his breast.
+
+"What is it, 'Meintje; tell me?"
+
+There was no reply.  Adrian looked down upon the sorrow-bowed head and
+felt that the growing lassitude of the girl called for firmer support,
+which was at once forthcoming.  The experience was new and alarming but,
+taken all round, he liked it.  Jacomina was no longer formidable; in a
+few moments he forgot that he had ever been afraid of her.
+
+"Come, Jacomyn', tell me what is the matter."
+
+"Oh, Adrian,--I am afraid to tell you for fear you would despise me."
+
+"Despise you?  No, you know I could never do that."
+
+"I am so unhappy because--because you used to like me so much, and now
+you never speak to me."
+
+Jacomina had now come to believe in the genuineness of her own woe, so
+she fell into a flood of real and violent tears.  Adrian gradually
+gathered her into his arms, and she allowed herself to be consoled.
+After a very few minutes a full understanding was arrived at; then
+Jacomina recovered herself with remarkable rapidity, and recollected
+that the wagons were far ahead.  Adrian's shyness had by this time
+completely gone, so much so that Jacomina had some difficulty in getting
+him to make a start.  In fact she had to escape from his arms by means
+of a subterfuge and dart away along the road.  Her lover did not lose
+much time in following her.  The course was interrupted by amatory
+interludes whenever the wayside boskage was propitious, so it was not
+before the outspanning took place that the wagons were reached.
+
+When the blushing pair stood before Uncle Diederick, that man of
+experiences did not need to have matters explained to him.
+
+"Well, Jacomina," he said, "I'll have to see about getting a wife myself
+now.  But you need not be afraid on account of Aunt Emerencia; no one,
+who is not a fool, buys an old mare when he can get a young one for the
+same price."
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Uncle Diederick, who had not been to Cape Town since the days of his
+early youth, was very much impressed by everything he saw, but by
+nothing so much as the chemists' shops.  He never got tired at gazing at
+the rows of bottles with their various coloured contents.  He wandered
+from one drug emporium to another, until he made the acquaintance of an
+affable young assistant who dispensed with an engaging air from behind a
+counter deeply laden with wondrous appliances and enticing compounds.
+This young man loved experiment for its own sake, and he had a wide
+field for the exercise of his hobby among the poorer classes, who
+usually came to him for panaceas for their minor ills.
+
+As Paul sat at the feet of Gamaliel, Uncle Diederick sat on a
+high-legged stool in the chemist's shop, drinking in greedily the lore
+which fell from the young man's lips, and making notes of the same in a
+tattered pocket-book, with a very stumpy pencil.  Thus Uncle Diederick
+widened his medical knowledge considerably, until he felt that all worth
+knowing of the healing art was now at his command.  The young man was
+the only one who suffered; his moral character became sadly deteriorated
+owing to the reverence with which Uncle Diederick regarded him, and the
+wrapt attention with which every essay of his was observed and recorded.
+
+Eventually Uncle Diederick placed an order worth about ten pounds at the
+shop, and obtained copious directions as to treatment of the different
+maladies which the contents of each bulky bottle might be expected to
+cure.
+
+The wagons had outspanned on the mountain slope, not far below the du
+Plessis' dwelling.  Jacomina was much impressed at the luxuriousness of
+Elsie's surroundings and the quality of the stuff of which her garments
+were made.  Gertrude and Helena tried to be civil and attentive to
+Jacomina and Adrian but--well, Jacomina was not long in seeing that the
+two town-bred girls were much more attractive than she was herself, and
+she did not care to appear at a disadvantage before her lover.  Elsie
+she did not at first feel jealous of.  As she expressed it to Adrian,
+the blind girl reminded her of the great peak at the head of the Tanqua
+valley, when it was covered with snow in winter.  One day, however, she
+observed a look upon Adrian's face as he was regarding his cousin, which
+made her resolve to hurry on the wedding at all hazards.
+
+At the lower end of Plein Street was a shop, a mere contemplation of the
+contents of which filled Jacomina's soul with satisfaction.  It was a
+large emporium, specially stocked and arranged for the purpose of
+supplying the needs of the farmers visiting the metropolis.  At this
+establishment produce of all kinds was purchased, the value being
+usually taken out in goods--a double profit thus being secured by the
+management.  Everything--from hardware to drapery, from groceries to
+hymn-books could here be purchased.
+
+It was at the establishment described that Uncle Diederick and Adrian
+had disposed of their respective loads of produce, and Jacomina had had
+a certain sum placed to her credit in the books.  Each day she would
+spend several hours wandering through the store, from one bewildering
+room to another, and now and then making a small purchase after such
+protracted deliberation and examination as drove the assistants well
+over the bounds of distraction.  The object which most fascinated
+Jacomina was a dummy attired in gorgeous bridal array and enclosed in a
+glazed frame.  This model, strange to say, bore a remote resemblance to
+Jacomina herself, and might have easily passed for an intentional
+likeness had its inane simper been changed into a smart and decidedly
+wide-awake expression.
+
+No youthful artist hovered, fascinated, before Milo's Venus so devotedly
+as did Jacomina before this glass shrine in which seemed to be housed
+the Goddess of Love.  She breathed no conscious prayer to the deity; yet
+it was in one of her ecstasies of worship that an inspiration came to
+her which eventuated in propitiously bringing about the end she had in
+view.
+
+Jacomina fell into bad spirits, and grew cold to her lover.  Adrian
+became distressed and redoubled his attentions.  Jacomina one day
+arranged so that she met Adrian on his way to the city.  She tried to
+avoid him, but he pursued her and persuaded her to accompany him for the
+sake of the walk, which was to be to the shop of perennial attractions.
+As the pair entered the establishment, Jacomina hesitated for an
+instant, bent her head and seemed as though about to retrace her steps
+into the street.  A wild hope surged up in the breast of a counter-clerk
+who had seen her approach, and now thought he was going to have a
+respite.
+
+Adrian became perplexed and bent over Jacomina's bowed head with
+solicitude.  Then, with a mighty effort she managed to raise a blush;
+lifting her face, when she had succeeded, to that of her lover for a
+ravishing instant.  After a pause she allowed herself to be reluctantly
+drawn into the building.
+
+Before the door, which led into the drapery department--which Adrian had
+not previously visited, stood the shrine, and from it the goddess beamed
+down upon the pair with inane benignity.  Adrian caught a glimpse of the
+ravishing form, and was at once struck by the resemblance it bore to his
+beloved.  A wild tumult seethed up in his ingenuous breast.  Just like
+that, he felt, Jacomina would look if similarly attired.  The
+embarrassed damsel moved away, causing consternation behind the counter
+she approached, and left her spell-bound adorer gaping.
+
+Adrian transacted his business with masculine promptitude, and then
+sought for Jacomina, whom he found at a counter absorbed in the
+examination of many coils of ribbon.  But she had executed the real
+business she had visited the shop for to her entire satisfaction, so she
+went away with her lover at once, leaving behind her a general sense of
+relief.
+
+Adrian tried to steer his course for an exit past the shrine, but
+Jacomina knew it would be a better move to get out by another door.
+When they were in the street Adrian began to refer to the subject which
+had caused such a ferment in his bosom:
+
+"Jacomyn--that girl in the white dress.  I wonder who made her.  She
+looked just like you."
+
+"Ach, Adrian,--how can you joke so?"
+
+"Jacomina,--she's really just like you, only not half so pretty.  I--I--
+I'd like to see you in a dress like that, Jacomina."
+
+"Ach, Adrian,--how can you talk like that?  It's only town girls that
+ever dress like that and then only--"
+
+"But, Jacomyn,--when we get married you might buy that very dress and
+put it on.  I--I--I wonder if they'd sell it.  They might easily make
+another for the figure in the glass case."
+
+Jacomina sighed deeply, and looked down with an air of mingled dejection
+and confusion.
+
+"That dress will be old before I will want it," she said.
+
+"How can you talk like that?  Why, I want you to put a dress like that
+on very soon."
+
+Jacomina sighed deeply and did not speak for a while.  Then she sadly
+said--raising, as she spoke, her eyes to Adrian's emotion-lit face:
+
+"I know that my father will go to live at the old place as soon as we
+return, and it will be years and years before he will ever come to Cape
+Town again.  No, Adrian,--you had better forget me, and look out for
+some girl whose father will be able to bring her to Cape Town soon.  I
+do not want you to be bound to one who may have to keep you waiting such
+a long, long time."
+
+The sentence ended with a sob.  They had now reached beyond the
+outskirts of the dwellings, and were on a pathway which meandered
+between patches of scrub.  At an appropriate spot Jacomina darted in
+behind a thicket, sank with every appearance of exhaustion on to a
+stone, and burst into tears.
+
+"Leave me,--leave me,"--she sobbed, as her lover, fondly solicitous,
+attempted to console her.  "I have had a dream; I know I shall never be
+able to come to Cape Town again.  Go away, Adrian, and find some girl
+who will not have to keep you waiting for years and then die without
+making you happy."
+
+Adrian became seriously alarmed.  Like most of his class, he was a firm
+believer in dreams.  Jacomina became more wildly dear at the thought of
+losing her.  His mind sought distractedly for an expedient to avert the
+threatened doom.  Then the memory of the goddess flitted across his
+brain and gave him an inspiration.
+
+"Jacomina,--I will buy that dress and we can be married at once.  I will
+go straight back now and ask the price of it."
+
+Jacomina feebly shook her head, but surrendered herself insensibly to
+her lover's embrace.  Then followed hotly-pressed argument on his side,
+feebly, but mournfully combated on hers.  Eventually she agreed to leave
+the matter in the joint hands of her lover and her father.  She then
+allowed herself to be led home, leaning heavily on the arm of her
+enraptured adorer.  Both were equally happy; each had gained that point
+the attainment of which was most desired.
+
+No difficulty was experienced in obtaining Uncle Diederick's consent to
+speedy nuptials.  Much distress was, however, felt by Adrian when he
+found, on calling at the emporium next day, that the nuptial robe of the
+goddess had been purchased by another prospective bride.  When he
+entered the establishment he found the goddess in a lamentable state.
+The dress, the veil and the wreath of orange blossoms had disappeared.
+The head and face were intact, but the rest of her once-ravishing form
+was little else than a wiry skeleton,--not constructed upon any known
+anatomical principles.
+
+Adrian's heart sank; he thought of Jacomina's dream.  He had made much
+capital out of the garment and its accessories--he had, in fact, used
+the goddess as a kind of battering ram wherewith to level Jacomina's
+supposed objections to a speedy union; now he thought in his innocence
+that Jacomina would draw back from the performance of her side of the
+contract.  After hurrying from the emporium with a sinking heart he
+arrived, pale and breathless, at the wagon.  Uncle Diederick happened to
+be in the City, engaged in the selection of drugs.
+
+"Jacomina,"--panted Adrian, "the dress is gone--sold to someone else--
+and it will take a week before another can be made.  Do you think Pa
+will wait for a few days more?"
+
+Uncle Diederick had this peculiarity: if he announced his intention of
+doing any given thing on a given day, he stuck to his word; nothing
+short of absolute necessity would stop him.  It was this that Adrian had
+in view.  Uncle Diederick had said that he meant to start on the
+following Monday; it was now Tuesday; wedding or no wedding it was quite
+certain that he would not alter his plans.
+
+Jacomina put on the look of a virgin saint who had just been condemned
+to the lions.
+
+"No, Adrian,--you know Pa _never_ waits."  She spoke with a resigned
+sigh.
+
+"But, my little heart,--it will only be for two days."
+
+"Pa _never_ waits.  No, Adrian--we will bid each other good-bye--you
+must forget me--My dream--If it had not been this it would have been
+something else--Good-bye, Adrian--Think of me sometimes--"
+
+She dissolved in tears.  Adrian sprang to her side and tried to comfort
+her, but she was beyond consolation for a long time.  Then she ceased
+weeping and sat with her eyes fixed steadfastly on the far away.
+
+"No, Adrian,--I had another dream last night.  I thought I met an old
+Bushwoman gathering roots in the veld, and she said to me that if any
+delay came you and I would never be married.  Good-bye, Adrian,--I would
+only bring you bad luck.  Go and find some other girl--but don't--forget
+me--altogether."
+
+The last words were spoken with a sobbing catch.  Adrian became
+agonised.  Jacomina, exhausted by her emotions, allowed him to possess
+her waist and draw her to him.
+
+"If you would not mind--Of course I know it would not be what I had
+promised--but as you have had those dreams;--if you would not mind being
+married in another dress;--we might get married on Monday, after all.
+Come, Jacomyntye, what does the dress matter?"
+
+Jacomina allowed herself to be persuaded, leaving her lover under the
+impression that she was conferring a great favour upon him.  But the
+shadow of an abiding sadness was upon her visage, as though she saw the
+hand of Fate uplifted to strike her.  She told her lover that he was not
+to hope too much--that she felt as though something were sure to
+intervene at the last moment.  This made Adrian feverishly anxious that
+the ceremony should take place and, had it been possible, he would have
+marched down to the church and had the knot tied at once.
+
+Jacomina told him that she did not want to trouble her father, who was
+enjoying himself so much, with her forebodings, and accordingly, her
+manner in Uncle Diederick's presence was as cheerful as usual.  Adrian
+was much impressed by this evidence of filial feeling.  He grew more and
+more enamoured as the hours dragged slowly past, and shuddered
+increasingly at the imminent catastrophe to which Jacomina continually
+alluded when the lovers were alone.
+
+At length the blissful day dawned.  A garment somewhat less ambitious
+than that which had clothed the goddess in the glass case had been
+hurriedly put together for the occasion, Adrian calling on the
+sempstress several times each day, to enquire how the important work was
+progressing.  After the ceremony, the bridal party returned to the
+wagon, and thence to the du Plessis' house, where a small feast had been
+prepared.
+
+Jacomina, feeling herself at a disadvantage, was anxious to get away.
+Adrian was speechless with bliss, and had no eyes for anyone but his
+bride.  He did not appear to advantage in his new store-clothes, which
+did not suit his stalwart form nearly as well as the rough, home-made
+garments to which he was accustomed.  Uncle Diederick enjoyed himself
+immensely.  He had never previously tasted champagne; under the
+influence of the seductive wine he nearly went the length of proposing
+marriage to Helena.
+
+In the afternoon a start was made.  Uncle Diederick's wagon had been
+comfortably fitted up for Elsie.  Gertrude and Helena accompanied their
+friend as far as the first outspan place, where a farewell libation of
+coffee was poured out from tin pannikins.  The wagon with the
+newly-married pair started first; that of Uncle Diederick remaining
+until the pony-carriage, which was sent out to fetch the two girls,
+arrived.
+
+The wagon with its green sides and long white tent rolled heavily away
+over the sand.  The two girls gazed through their tears until this ship
+of the desert which bore back to the unheeding wilds this strange and
+beautiful creature who had brightened their home during four happy
+years, slowly disappeared.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIFTEEN.
+
+ELSIE'S RETURN TO ELANDSFONTEIN.
+
+It was late in the evening of a misty, depressing day, when Elsie
+arrived at the Elandsfontein homestead.  The same air of unkempt
+mournfulness brooded over the place.  Aletta, who had grown stout and
+frowsy, had prepared herself to meet her errant niece with bitter
+reproaches, but one glance at Elsie's stately presence and superior
+attire, proved sufficient to demoralise the aunt.
+
+Aletta had a furtive, crushed look.  The long years of misery and
+isolation had left their mark upon her.  The only thing which kept her
+above the level of the mere animal was the love she still bore her
+husband, in spite of his consistent neglect Gideon had spent the greater
+portion of the past four years in wandering vaguely through desert
+spaces, the more remote the better.  In fact he only returned to the
+farm from time to time to refit his wagon or renew his cattle or stores.
+On each occasion of his departure Aletta had made up her mind that she
+would never see him again.  He had now been absent for several months,
+and none could say when he was likely to return.
+
+But Aletta's curiosity soon got the better of her awe, so one day she
+began, tearfully and apologetically, to ask Elsie about her adventures.
+Why had she gone--how could she leave them all in such a state of fear
+and uncertainty--how could she, a white girl, run away with a Bushman
+and thus bring disgrace on respectable people?  The questions came out
+in an incoherent torrent, which ended in a flood of tears.
+
+"I went on account of my father," replied Elsie.
+
+"But why did you go without telling us?"
+
+"Had I told you, you would have stopped me."
+
+"But you don't mean to tell me that you and Kanu walked all the way to
+Cape Town.  Why, it takes ten days to reach Cape Town with a span of fat
+oxen."
+
+"Yes, Kanu and I walked all the way."
+
+"But where is Kanu."
+
+"I cannot say; I thought to have found him here."
+
+"We thought he had taken you away and murdered you.  Had he come back
+here he would have been shot."
+
+"Poor Kanu; I am glad he did not return."
+
+"But, my child, there must be more to tell.  Why did you go just then,
+and why did you never let us know where you were?"
+
+"There is much to tell, but the time to tell it has not yet come.  When
+my father returns you will, perhaps, know all, but until he bids me
+speak I cannot."
+
+The blind girl's words made Aletta quail.  The return of Stephanus was
+above all the thing she most dreaded.  Deep down in her consciousness
+lay a conviction of Stephanus' innocence and her husband's guilt.  This
+she had never admitted even to herself.  The first suspicion of the
+dreadful truth began to grow upon her immediately after the trial; of
+late years suspicion had developed into certainty.  Her knowledge of the
+deeply-wronged man led her to infer that he would return raging for
+vengeance, and that her husband's life would inevitably pay the penalty
+of his sin.  Many a time had she poured out frantic petitions to Heaven
+that Stephanus might die in prison, and thus free her husband from the
+shadow that darkened his life.  To think now that the event she dreaded
+so sorely was about to happen within the space of a few months, turned
+her heart to stone.
+
+A few weeks, however, of Elsie's society made her think that possibly
+her conviction that Stephanus would come back filled with an implacable
+desire for vengeance was a mistaken one.  The pledge which Elsie had
+made to her father sealed her lips on the subject of his forgiveness of
+the wrong that had been done him, but the influence of her strong, sweet
+nature came more and more to still the terror that had recently made
+Aletta's life more of a misery to her than ever.  The only hope of the
+unhappy woman now lay in the possibility of being able to influence
+Stephanus through the child that he loved so dearly, and she meant to
+pour out her whole soul, with all its doubts and suspicions to Elsie
+before her father's return, and beg for her intercession.
+
+Nearly four months elapsed after Elsie's arrival before her uncle
+returned.  One night, late, the footsteps of a horse were heard, and
+soon afterwards Gideon entered the house with weary tread.  He had left
+the wagon some distance behind.  When Aletta told him of Elsie's return
+he started violently and turned deadly pale.  He did not ask where his
+niece had been.  As his wife descanted with nervous volubility upon the
+mystery, and explained how she had been unsuccessful in eliciting from
+Elsie any particulars of her flight and subsequent adventures, Gideon
+found himself wondering whether it would not be possible for him to get
+away secretly and return to the wilderness, thus to avoid meeting the
+accusing look of the blind eyes that he remembered so well and dreaded
+so sorely.  But Elsie just then stepped softly into the room.
+
+"Where is Uncle Gideon?" she said in a soft voice.
+
+Gideon gazed in speechless astonishment at Elsie.  His apprehensive eye
+wandered over her graceful form and her pallid, beautiful face.  He
+noticed how her figure had developed and how the gold had deepened in
+her hair.  As Aletta tremblingly led her forward to the bench upon which
+Gideon was seated the unhappy man quailed and tried vainly to avoid the
+blind, accusing eyes, which seemed to seek his and to hold them when
+found.  Elsie lifted her hands and placed them on his shoulders.
+
+"Uncle Gideon," she said, "my father sent me back to live with you until
+his release."
+
+Gideon murmured some unintelligible words.  Elsie passed her hands
+lightly over his features.  Aletta quietly left the room.
+
+"Yes," said Elsie, "you have suffered; I will try to comfort you, Uncle
+Gideon."
+
+A sense of immediate relief came over the unhappy man.  It was now clear
+to him that Stephanus could not have told her the truth about the
+tragedy at the spring, or else she would never have met him and spoken
+to him as she did.  So far it was well, but the fact of Stephanus not
+having taken her into his confidence was a proof of the implacability of
+his mind.  But in an instant his mind rushed to another conclusion: this
+blind creature who loved her wronged father so utterly,--was it not
+certain that her desire for vengeance must be as keen as his?  But he
+would balk them both by plunging again into the wilderness--so far, this
+time, that he would never be able to return.
+
+"A good way to comfort one," he growled ungraciously, "to wander away
+with a Bushman and make us run all over the country looking for you."
+
+"Would you like to know, truly, why I went, Uncle Gideon?"
+
+"Oh, as you are back all right now and have had enough to eat, wherever
+you have been, it does not matter; you can tell me some other time.--
+Only you must not do such a thing again."
+
+"No,--there will be no need for me to do the like again."
+
+Gideon left the room, feeling more and more puzzled.  Each one of
+Elsie's ambiguous remarks sent his speculations farther and farther
+afield.  One thing only was clear to him,--it was time to carry out that
+intention which had been gradually growing of late years as time went by
+and his brother did not, as the miserable man had confidently expected,
+die in prison.  This was the intention, previously unformulated, of
+finally leaving wife, home and everything else and trekking to some
+unknown spot far beyond the great, mysterious Gariep,--to some spot so
+distant that his brother's vengeance would not be able to reach him, and
+there spending the remnant of his miserable days.
+
+To do Gideon but justice, the strongest element in his dread of meeting
+Stephanus was not physical but moral.  He felt he could not bear to
+confront the stern accusation which he pictured as arising in the
+injured man's piercing eyes.  He feared death, for he dared not meet his
+God with this unrepented crime on his soul, but he feared it less than
+the eyes of his injured brother,--that brother whom he had robbed of ten
+precious years of life.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIXTEEN.
+
+GIDEON'S FLIGHT TO THE WILDERNESS.
+
+After Gideon had become somewhat accustomed to Elsie's presence that awe
+with which she had at first inspired him began to lessen.  Now that he
+meant to go away finally nothing she knew or could do mattered to him
+very much.  He was fond of Aletta in a way,--more or less as one is fond
+of a faithful dog, but she was the only being in the wide world who
+cared for him, so he felt the prospect of parting from her very keenly.
+He determined to make a full confession of his transgression to her
+before leaving, feeling persuaded that thenceforth she would look upon
+him with abhorrence and thus would not sorrow at his departure.  The
+thought that he was about to destroy his patient wife's regard for his
+lonely self was not the least of Gideon's troubles.
+
+He tried to carry off his distress with an air of unconcern which,
+however, did not deceive anyone.  As the preparations for his departure
+were being hurried towards completion he became more talkative than
+usual.  Aletta, at the near prospect of the parting, was sunk in the
+depths of misery.  Adrian and his wife who resided with Uncle Gideon,
+now and then visited the homestead.  Jacomina had refused to leave her
+father, on the pretext that her assistance in his medical practice was
+indispensable.  The true reason was, however, that she wanted, if
+possible, to prevent him marrying again.
+
+Elsie, to whom the night was as the day, continued her old habit of
+wandering abroad after all the others had gone to bed.  She invariably
+dressed in light colours and used to flit like a ghost among the trees.
+Gideon had dubbed her "White Owl," and he never addressed her as
+anything else.
+
+Two days before Gideon's intended departure the three were sitting at
+breakfast.  A messenger who had been despatched to the residence of the
+Field Cornet, some forty miles away, was seen approaching.  Gideon was
+in one of his forced sardonic moods.
+
+"Aletta," he said, "your eyes are red again; have you been boiling
+soap?"
+
+"No, Gideon; it is not only the steam from the soap-pot that reddens the
+eyes."
+
+"Has the maid spoilt a batch of bread?  If she has, _her_ eyes ought to
+be red and not yours."
+
+"No, Gideon,--the bread has been well baked."
+
+"What is the matter, then?  Sunday, Monday and Tuesday your face is like
+a pumpkin when the rain is falling; Wednesday, Thursday and Friday the
+water is still running; Saturday it is not dry.  Did you ever laugh in
+your life?"
+
+"It is long since I have heard you laugh, Gideon."
+
+"I?  I can laugh now,--Well,--you have never seen me weep."
+
+"Would to God you did rather than laugh like that."
+
+"Uncle Gideon," said Elsie, "one day your tears will flow."
+
+"When will that day come, White Owl?"
+
+"When my father's prison doors are opened."
+
+Gideon glared at her, terror and fury writ large upon his distorted
+face.  Just then a knock was heard; Aletta arose and went to the door
+where she found the returned messenger, who had just off-saddled his
+horse.  She came back to the table and silently laid a letter before
+Gideon who, when he recognised the handwriting started violently.  After
+looking at the letter for a few seconds he picked it up as though about
+to open it; then he flung the missive down and hurried from the room.
+
+"Elsie," said Aletta in agitated tones, "here is a letter from your
+father."
+
+Elsie sprang to her feet.
+
+"Read it,--read it,--Aunt," she said, "perhaps the prison doors are
+open."
+
+Aletta opened the letter with shaking fingers and read it aloud
+laboriously and in an agitated voice:--
+
+"My Brother Gideon,
+
+"In three days from now I shall once more walk God's earth--a free man.
+Because I worked well and did as I was bidden without question, my time
+of punishment has been shortened.  From our cousins at Stellenbosch I
+have obtained a wagon and oxen, by means of which I shall at once hurry
+home.  When this reaches you I shall be well on my way.  My first
+business must be to see you.
+
+"We two have a reckoning to make together.  It will be best that we be
+alone when it is made.
+
+"Your brother,
+
+"Stephanus."
+
+Aletta uttered a moan and bent forward with her face on the table.
+Elsie, with a rapt smile on her face stood up and laid her hand upon her
+aunt's shoulder.  Then a hurried step was heard and Gideon entered the
+room.
+
+Seeing the letter lying upon the table where it had fallen from his
+wife's nerveless hand, Gideon picked it up and hurriedly read it
+through.  Then, with a curse, he flung it down.
+
+"Aletta," he cried, "I am going at once.  I cannot meet him.  God--why
+was I born this man's brother?--Nine long years thirsting for my blood."
+
+"It is not your blood that he wants, Uncle Gideon," said Elsie in a calm
+tone.
+
+"Yes,--yes, Gideon," said Aletta, "go away for a time.  I will keep him
+here and try to soften his heart."
+
+"Yes,--keep him here for a time--for only a little time--but I shall go
+away for ever.  I shall go where never a white man's foot has trod, and
+when I can go no farther I will dig my own grave."
+
+"Do not go, Uncle Gideon," said Elsie, "stay and meet him."
+
+"Silence, blind tiger's cub that wants my blood.  Get out of my sight."
+
+"You will not go so far but that he will find you," said Elsie as she
+moved from the room.  "He will have his reckoning.  He does not want
+your blood."
+
+"Aletta, I have told them to inspan the wagon and start.  Put in my food
+and bedding at once.  When the wagon has gone we will talk; I will
+follow it on horseback.  I have things to tell you that will make you
+hate me and wish never to see my face again."
+
+"Nothing could make that happen.--Gideon, I know--"
+
+"Wait,--let me see when this letter was written--Christ! it is thirteen
+days old,--he must be nearly here--"
+
+Gideon rushed from the room and began to hurry the servants in their
+preparations for departure.  The oxen had just been driven down from
+their grazing ground high on the mountain side.  The wagon had been
+hurriedly packed with bedding, water, food and other stores.  The mob of
+horses were driven in from the kraal; Gideon gave hurried directions to
+the Hottentot servants as to which were to be selected.  Soon the wagon
+was lumbering heavily up the steep mountain track towards the unknown,
+mysterious North, in the direction where Gideon had so sorely and vainly
+sought for the dwelling-place of Peace.
+
+The horses were now caught and Gideon's favourite hunting steed saddled
+up.  The spare horses were led after the wagon by a Hottentot
+after-rider.  Then Gideon entered the house to take farewell of his
+wife.
+
+He bent down and kissed her almost passionately on the lips.
+
+"Aletta," he said, "you will not understand me; nobody could.  What I
+have done will seem to you the worst of sins;--yet to me it was right--
+and yet it has hung like a millstone about my neck all these years."
+
+Aletta seized one of his hands between hers.
+
+"It will fall from you if you repent," she said.
+
+"Repent.  Never.  He deserved it; I would do it again to-morrow.
+Aletta," (here he moved towards the door, trying to disengage his hand)
+"Stephanus never meant to shoot me; the gun went off by accident.  I
+accused him falsely and he has suffered all these years for a thing he
+did not do.  Now,--good-bye."
+
+He again tried to escape, but Aletta held him fast.
+
+"Come back, come back, Gideon,--I have known this for years."
+
+"Known it?"
+
+"Yes,--and so has Elsie, although no word of it has passed between us."
+
+"Do not think that I regret it; do not think that I repent.  He deserved
+it all, and more.  Think of all he did to me.--And yet I fear to meet
+him.--That blind girl--she wants to dip her white fingers in my blood--
+and yet I do not fear his killing me.  Do you know why I am running away
+from him?"
+
+"Yes, you fear to meet his eyes."
+
+"That is it,--his eyes.  I am not afraid of death at his hands--although
+I suppose God will send me to burn in Hell for doing the work He keeps
+for His own hands.--And he means to kill me when he finds me--the White
+Owl knows it--but his eyes--Nine years chained up with blacks, thinking
+the whole time of his wrong and his revenge.--You remember how big and
+fierce his eyes used to get in anger.--I have seen them across the
+plains and the mountains for nine years, getting bigger and fiercer.
+They are always glaring at me; I fear them more than his bullet."
+
+"Yes, Gideon, it is well that you go away for a time.  I will try what I
+can do.  He is getting to be an old man now and anger does not burn so
+hotly in the old as in the young.  I will not speak to him now, but when
+he has been free for a time I will kneel to him and beg him to forgive
+for Marta's sake, and Elsie's.  Elsie does not hate you, Gideon."
+
+"She must, if she knows what I have done to her father.  She hates me.
+You heard what she said about his having his reckoning.  Were his anger
+to cool she would light it anew with those eyes of hers that glow like
+those of a lion in the dark.  But anger such as his does not cool."
+
+"Gideon, you are wrong about Elsie; she loves her father, but she will
+not counsel him to take revenge.  Oh, Gideon, we are old now, and this
+hatred has kept us in cold and darkness all our lives.  One little,
+happy year; then the first quarrel,--and ever since misery and
+loneliness.  If he forgives, you will come back.  Do not take away my
+only hope."
+
+"He will never forgive."
+
+"I will follow him about and kneel to him every day until he forgives.
+Then you will come back and we will again be happy--just a little
+happiness and peace before we die."
+
+"Happy, Aletta?  There is no more happiness for us.  He--he killed our
+joy years back, for ever.  I go away now and I shall never return.  Get
+Adrian and his wife to come and live here.  For years I have known that
+this would happen.  At first I hoped that he would die; then I knew that
+God was keeping him alive and well and strong to punish me for doing His
+work.  I have made over the farm and stock to you; the papers are in the
+camphor-wood box.  Good-bye,--we must never meet again."
+
+"My husband, the desert, holds spoor a long time.  The sand-storm blots
+it out for a distance, but it is found again farther on.  When Stephanus
+forgives I will follow you and bring you back."
+
+"No, Aletta, we will meet no more.  When I die my bones will lie where
+no Christian foot has ever trod."
+
+"Gideon, on the day when Stephanus forgives I will go forth seeking you,
+and I will seek until I find you or until I die in the waste."
+
+When Gideon van der Walt reached the mountain saddle at the head of the
+kloof, across which the track which led into the desert plains of
+Bushmanland passed, he turned and took a long look at his homestead.
+Then his glance wandered searchingly over the valley in which his life
+had been passed.  There it lay, green and fertile,--for the
+south-western rains had fallen heavily and often during the last few
+months.  The black, krantzed ranges glowed in the noontide sun.  The
+last spot his eye rested upon before he crossed the saddle was the
+little patch of vivid foliage surrounding the spring on the tiny ripples
+of which his life and the lives of so many others had been wrecked.
+Just on the edge of the copse the stream seemed to hang like a bright
+jewel, as the sunlight glinted from the pure, limpid water.
+
+As Gideon turned away his eyes grew moist for an instant, and he felt a
+queer, unbidden feeling of almost tenderness for the brother with whom
+among these hills and valleys he had played and hunted in the days of
+his innocence, creeping like a tendril about his heart.  But he crushed
+the feeling down, and rode on with his hat pressed over his eyebrows.
+
+On the other side of the mountain pass the outlook was different.  He
+was on the north-eastern limit of the coast rains.  Bushmanland depended
+for its uncertain rainfall upon thunderstorms from the north in the
+summer season.  But for two years no rain had fallen anywhere near the
+southern fringe of the desert, so the plains which stretched forth
+northward from Gideon's feet were utterly void of green vegetation.
+
+To one familiar with the desert the sight before him had an awful
+significance; it meant that there was no water, nor any vegetation worth
+considering for at least a hundred and fifty miles.  Gideon had known,
+by the fact of the larger game flocking down into the valleys, that
+Bushmanland was both verdureless and waterless, and that anyone who
+should attempt to cross it would incur a terrible risk.
+
+But nothing before him could compete for terror with what he was fleeing
+from.  Setting spurs to his horse Gideon passed the wagon; then he rode
+ahead at a walk, the patient oxen following with the rumbling wagon,
+upon his tracks.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.
+
+THE RETURN OF STEPHANUS.
+
+"Come, child, it is past our time for sleep," said Aletta.  She was
+sitting on the sofa in the _voorhuis_.  It was midnight of the day of
+Gideon's departure.  Elsie stood at the open window which faced the
+south.  The night was still and sultry and a dense fog covered the
+earth.
+
+"I shall not go to bed to-night, Aunt.  My father draws near.  His wagon
+has reached the sand-belt where the dead tree stands."
+
+"Nonsense, child, the sand-belt is an hour's ride on horseback from
+here.  Let us pray to God for sleep and good dreams, and then lie down
+until the day comes."
+
+"I shall not go to bed to-night; my father is coming."
+
+"Nonsense, nonsense,--you cannot hear at such a distance."
+
+"I can hear, and the sound stills the long pain in my heart.  My father
+draws near and nearer."
+
+"Well--well--perhaps it is true--perhaps--"
+
+She fell upon her knees and threw up her clasped hands.  "Oh God, let
+him not come before my husband is far away.  Oh God,--I am blameless.--
+Grant me only this."
+
+Elsie approached her with a smile, bent down and encircled her with a
+protecting arm and then drew her gently to a seat.
+
+"Aunt,--let me talk to you: Do you know that I am often very glad that I
+was born blind?"
+
+"Glad you are blind?"
+
+"Yes, because I have knowledge of many things unknown to people who can
+see."
+
+"What kind of things?"
+
+"Many things of many kinds.  For instance:--to-night you cannot see the
+stars; a dry mist has rolled up from the sea since we have been in this
+room; it covers the valley like a blanket.  But the hill-tops are clear;
+they are hidden from you, but I can see them--and the stars above, as
+well.--And my father draws nearer."
+
+"God's mercy forbid.  Three days,--three short days is all I ask for."
+
+"Where you see but clouds I see the stars; where you see danger I see
+joy.  You fear my father without cause."
+
+"Without cause.--Nine long years--no cause--?"
+
+"There was cause enough, but my father is not angry."
+
+"Not angry?  Hark.  Did you not hear a sound?"
+
+"Yes, I hear the wild ostriches booming in the valley."
+
+"Close the window and come away, child; the darkness is full of horror.
+You are right not to go to bed.  I could not sleep to-night."
+
+"Why do you fear the open window, Aunt?"
+
+"The night is dark."  She shuddered and crouched into the corner of the
+sofa.
+
+"The day is ever dark to me, yet I fear not."
+
+"Last night the dogs howled and I saw white shapes flitting among the
+trees where the graves are."
+
+"What of that?  Shapes often flit about me; I call them and they are
+here; I bid them depart and they are gone."
+
+"Child,--you are blind and thus cannot understand.--Hark.--Is not that a
+sound of shouting, afar off?"
+
+"It is but the jackals howling on the hill-side.--The time has not yet
+come.--But, Aunt,--let me tell you farther of the things I know."
+
+"Not to-night,--I am in terror enough as it is."
+
+"What I have to tell you will not terrify you, for you are guiltless."
+
+"Guiltless,--yes; but God visits the sins of the guilty upon the
+guiltless.  But it is not for myself that I fear."
+
+"One of the things which I see with clearness is that there is no reason
+for your terror."
+
+Aletta bowed her head forward on her hands.  The candle had almost burnt
+out; only a faint, uncertain flicker arose out of the socket.  She
+started, and lifted her head:
+
+"Listen,--that is surely a sound."
+
+"Yes,--the springbucks came over the mountain last week; you hear the
+bellowing of the rams on the upland ledge and the clashing of their
+horns as they fight--But I can hear that my father draws nearer."
+
+"If he be not coming in anger, why does he hasten thus?  But you cannot
+hear him; the sound is in your own ears."
+
+"May not one hasten in love as well as in hate?  The wagon has now
+reached the rocky pass between the kopjes.  It will soon be here."
+
+Aletta arose and walked over to the window.  She linked her arm in that
+of Elsie and tried to draw the blind girl away from her post.
+
+"Come to bed,--I am not so terrified as I was a while ago."
+
+"Hark.--Even the ears of one who is not blind can hear that."
+
+A light breeze was streaming up the valley, driving the mist before it
+in broken masses.  From the rough, stony pass could be heard the heavy
+thumpings of the massive wheels.  Aletta once more sank to her knees in
+agony.
+
+"Oh God,--you have brought him here.--Oh God,--soften his heart--"
+
+"Aunt,--God heard your prayer long before you spoke it.  His heart has
+been softened."
+
+"No, no, child.  I hear anger in the noise of the wheels and in the
+clappings of the whip.--Nine years--nine years--and innocent.--Oh God,
+soften his heart,--or let my husband get away.--Elsie,--I charge you not
+to tell your father what road my husband has gone.--Tell him that your
+uncle went a month ago.--Let us go to the huts and warn the servants--"
+
+"Aunt,--wait just a little while and you will see.  I shall walk down
+the road and meet my father."
+
+"Yes,--yes,--and, Elsie,--pray to him for the sake of a lonely old woman
+who seems to have never known joy.--Go, child--but wait--No, I cannot
+stay here alone; I fear the darkness."
+
+"Come with me, Aunt."
+
+"Yes,--yes,--but what if it be not his wagon?"
+
+"It is my father's wagon.  Come."  The breeze had freshened; the mist
+had been rolled out of the valley, leaving it clear to the stars, but
+the vapour hung in wisps from every mountain head and streamed away
+white in the shining of the rising moon.  As the two walked down the
+road it was she who was blind that walked forward with unfaltering
+steps, leading her who could see, but who faltered at every yard.
+
+Nearer and nearer came the clattering wagon, and the driver's voice as
+he shouted to the team could be clearly heard.  Aletta sank down upon a
+stone at the wayside and Elsie, after walking on for a few paces, stood
+motionless in the middle of the road.  Her loosened hair floated on the
+wind; her tall figure, clad in fluttering white, made a striking picture
+in the light of the now fully arisen moon.
+
+The leader threw up his hand and stopped the team with a call; Stephanus
+sprang from the wagon box, ran forward and clasped Elsie to his breast.
+
+"My little child--grown into a woman--her face shining as brightly as
+the sun she has never seen, and making night like day.--But where is my
+brother--where is Gideon--?"
+
+Aletta staggered forward and knelt in the road at his feet.
+
+"Oh, Stephanus,--have mercy and let him be.--He fled when he heard you
+were coming.--Have mercy.--He has suffered too--"
+
+"We both need the mercy of God.--Aletta, do not kneel to me.--Where is
+my brother Gideon?"
+
+He drew the half-unconscious woman to her feet and she burst into a
+storm of tears.
+
+"Oh, Stephanus," she said, "you are not deceiving me?--Tell me,--have
+you forgiven the wrong?"
+
+"Yes, Aletta,--as I hope to be forgiven.  Whither did Gideon go?  Let me
+follow him."
+
+"Thank God,--thank God, who has heard my prayer."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.
+
+HOW KANU PROSPERED.
+
+Kanu arose from his hard couch on the floor of the cavern wherein he
+dwelt with his followers and clambered to the top of the rocky ridge
+which capped the krantz at the foot of which the cavern was situated.
+It was hunger and thirst which drove him forth thus restlessly under the
+midnight stars.  Every night for more than a month he had sat for hours
+at this spot.  Rain had not fallen for nearly two years and the little
+brackish fountain in the kloof below, on which these Bushmen were solely
+dependent for water to keep body and soul together, had shrunk and
+shrunk until it was reduced to a mere trickle.  As the fountain shrank
+it became more and more brackish; so much so that after his long day of
+unsuccessful hunting Kanu had been unable to quench his thirst at it.
+
+When he reached the top of the ridge the Bushman instinctively turned
+his gaze to the north-east.  The sky was absolutely cloudless and the
+stars were shining and throbbing as they only shine and throb over the
+desert.  He sat long motionless and was about to return, sick at soul,
+to the cave, when he caught his breath short, and his heart gave a great
+throb, for a faint flash lit up the horizon for a instant.  Another
+flash, brighter than the first, soon followed.  Kanu clambered swiftly
+down the steep hill-side, wakened the other cave-dwellers and informed
+them of what he had seen.  In a few seconds the cave was the scene of
+bustling activity, preparatory to an immediate migration.
+
+These distant flashes of lightning had for the little clan--or rather
+family of Bushmen, an all-important significance, for they meant that in
+some distant region beyond the north-eastern horizon a thunderstorm was
+raging and thus the long drought had broken on the vast plains sloping
+northward to the mighty, mysterious Gariep.
+
+The cave was situated in a spur of that rugged range of iron-black hills
+known as the Kamiesbergen, and which were now, after the long-protracted
+drought, covered with blackened stumps marking the spots where, after
+rain, the graceful sheaves of the "twa" grass grow.  The Bushmen knew
+there was no chance of rain falling where they were, for their moisture
+came in the winter season in the form of wet mists from the sea.  These
+never passed the limit of the hills.  On the other hand, the only rains
+which visited the plains were those which swept down with the
+thunderstorms from the torrid north, when the great clouds advanced with
+roarings as though to smite the hills asunder but, within the compass of
+a vulture's swoop, would be stopped as though by a wall of invisible
+adamant and sent reeling to the eastward.
+
+It was now midsummer and the Bushmen well knew that they would never be
+able to survive in their present situation until midwinter, before which
+season no rain from the southward was to be expected.  For some time
+they had realised that their only chance of escaping a death of terrible
+suffering lay in cutting the track of the first thunder shower which
+would, as they were well aware, be the track of the others soon
+following.  Should they succeed in doing this they would revel in a belt
+of desert turned as though by magic into a smiling garden, full of game,
+and with many a rock-bottomed, sand-filled depression in which good
+water could be easily reached by burrowing.
+
+Already the herds of famished game would be on the move, apprised by the
+lightning-sign of the falling of that rain which was to be their
+salvation:--springbucks,--flitting like ghosts under the late-risen
+moon; gemsbucks,--sore-footed from digging out with their hoofs the
+large tap-roots from which they get that supply of moisture that serves
+them in lieu of water to drink; hartebeests lumbering along with swift,
+ungainly stride, and other desert denizens in bewildering variety.
+Hanging on the flanks of the horde might be seen the gaunt, hungry
+lions, seeking in vain to quench their raging thirst in the blood of
+their emaciated victims.
+
+When Kanu found that Elsie had disappeared from where he had left her
+among the rocks and bushes at the foot of Table Mountain, he took to the
+veldt with the intention of getting as far from the dwellings of
+civilised men as possible.  He knew that if he returned to Elandsfontein
+and told the van der Walts his remarkable story he would never be
+believed, and that the consequences would be distinctly unpleasant, if
+not fatal, to him.  So he exercised the utmost wariness, taking great
+precautions against the possibility of being observed by day when
+seeking food.  It will, of course, be understood that he travelled only
+by night.  Being a Bushman of intelligence Kanu reflected upon many
+things in the course of his exciting and wearisome journey.  In his
+untutored ignorance he classified the Caucasian race arbitrarily into
+two categories,--the good and the bad.  Elsie comprised within her own
+person the one category; all other Europeans fell into the other.
+
+Cautiously feeling his way northward, Kanu made a wide detour to avoid
+passing anywhere near the Tanqua Valley, and then wandered vaguely on in
+the hope of falling in with some of his own race.  This hope was
+realised one morning in a somewhat startling manner.  Following some
+tracks which he had discovered leading up the stony side of a very steep
+mountain, he suddenly found himself confronted by a number of pygmies
+such as himself; each, however, with a drawn bow and an arrow which Kanu
+knew was most certainly poisoned, trained upon him at point-blank range.
+
+Kanu at once did what was the only proper thing to do under the
+circumstances,--he cried out in the Bushman tongue that he was a friend
+and a brother, and then fell flat on his face and lay, with extended
+arms, awaiting death or the signal to arise.  Then he heard the warriors
+consulting together as to whether they should summarily despatch him or
+lead him captive to the cave in which they dwelt and kill him there for
+the amusement of the non-combatant members of the little community.
+They decided in favour of the latter alternative and then Kanu knew that
+most probably his life would be spared.
+
+But as yet he was not by any means out of the wood His vestiges of
+European clothing caused him to be suspected and, in the savage mind,
+suspicion and condemnation are not very far apart.  Cases were familiar
+to all in which renegade sons of the desert had betrayed the
+hiding-places of their compatriots to their deadly enemies, the Boers,
+and it was quite possible that Kanu might turn out to be a traitor.  But
+when the captive showed the unhealed stripes with which his back was
+still scored, the captors began to feel more kindly disposed towards
+him, and they eventually came to the conclusion that he was not a spy.
+
+Later, when Kanu told his father's name, and related the circumstances
+of the raid which swept his family from the face of the earth and made
+him a bondman to the hated Boer,--and when it turned out that old Nalb,
+the patriarch of the party, had once seen a picture painted by Kanu's
+father who, though he had died comparatively young, had been a somewhat
+celebrated artist, the new arrival was accepted into full fellowship and
+made free of the cave and all its contents.
+
+The Bushman acknowledged no chieftain, nor was he bound by any tribal
+ties.  Each family was independent of every other family and hunted on
+its own account.  The little community into which Kanu found himself
+adopted consisted of eight men, seven women and fourteen children of
+various ages.  They lived after the manner of their kind,--absolutely
+from hand to mouth, taking no thought for the morrow.  Their movements
+about the country were determined by accidents of weather and the chase,
+but they retired from time to time to their cave in the Kamiesbergen,
+whenever the adventitious rains made the locality habitable.  When they,
+or any of them, killed a large animal, they would not attempt to remove
+the meat, but would camp alongside the carcase and gorge until
+everything but the hair and the pulverised bones was finished.  The
+family cave, besides being endeared by many associations, had the
+advantage of being in the vicinity of a spring which, although its water
+was rather brackish, had never been known to give out completely in the
+severest drought.
+
+The cave had another great advantage,--that of being surrounded on all
+sides by a wide belt of desert, so the pygmies were not at all likely to
+be disturbed by inconvenient callers.  It was spacious, and its walls
+were well adapted for the exercise of that remarkable art which the
+Bushman practised,--the art of painting.  Here, on the wide natural
+panels were frescoed counterfeit presentments of men and all other
+animals with which the Bushmen were familiar, in more or less skilful
+outline.  There was no attempt at anything like perspective, but some of
+the figures were drawn with spirit and showed considerable skill as well
+as an evident natural artistic faculty.  The animals most frequently
+represented were the eland, the hartebeeste, the gemsbok and the baboon.
+One picture was a battle-piece and represented a number of men being
+hurled over a cliff.  This was old Nalb's handiwork, and was executed in
+commemoration of an attack by some strangers upon the ancestral cave,
+which was repulsed with great slaughter.
+
+A few of the paintings were the work of itinerant artists, who
+sometimes, in seasons of plenty, wandered from cave to cave,--possibly
+in the interests of art,--even as Royal Academicians have found it
+necessary to visit the schools of Rome and Paris.  Such paintings could
+be distinguished among the others by the hand-print of the artist in
+paint below each.  They were usually somewhat better executed than the
+others, and often represented animals not common in the neighbourhood,
+but with whose proportions the artist had evidently familiarised himself
+in other and, perhaps, distant parts.
+
+The paints used were ochres of different tints,--from white, ranging
+through several reds and browns, up to black.  These were mixed with fat
+and with some vegetable substance to make the colours bite into the
+rock.  Some of the most vivid tints were taken from those fossils known
+as coprolites, in which small kernels of ochreous substance are found to
+exist.  The brush was made of the pinion feathers of small birds.
+
+It was not long before Kanu rose to a position of eminence in the little
+clan.  He took unto himself, as wife, Ksoa, a daughter of old Nalb and,
+when that venerable leader's physical vigour began to decline, Kanu
+gradually came to be looked upon as his probable successor.  His sojourn
+among the Boers, whilst it had told against his skill as a hunter, had
+sharpened his wits generally.  Soon he became as expert as any in the
+tracking of game.  Then he introduced a slight improvement in the matter
+of fixing an arrow-head to the shaft, which was immediately recognised
+by the superstitious Bushmen as an evidence of more than human ability.
+Thus, when old Nalb met his death from thirst, after finding that the
+store of water-filled ostrich-eggshells which he had cached a long time
+previously had been broached, Kanu was at once looked upon as the
+leader.
+
+For a few seasons peace and plenty reigned.  The locusts appeared year
+after year, on their way to devastate the cultivated portions of the
+Colony, and the Bushmen thanked their gods for the boon, with elaborate
+sacrifices in which Kanu officiated as high priest.  Then came the
+drought, which was attributed to the fact of one of their number having
+allowed his shadow to fall upon a dying ostrich in the afternoon.  Had
+this happened in the morning, it would not have mattered so much but,
+happening when the sun was going home to rest, and thus preventing the
+luminary from taking his lawful dues in the matter of supper, it was
+looked upon as likely to prove a deadly affront to all the spirits of
+the sky, who were the sun's subjects.  These spirits, who sent or
+withheld run as pleased their capricious minds, the Bushmen feared and
+constantly endeavoured to propitiate.  The man guilty of this heinous
+offence was looked at askance by all, but was forgiven after elaborate
+and painful rites had been solemnised over him.  Nevertheless, when the
+drought increased in intensity, and the children began to sicken from
+drinking the salt-charged water from the failing spring, the offender
+found it judicious to disappear.
+
+As soon as the women had returned from the spring, bearing their bark
+nets full of ostrich-eggshells containing water,--the shells being
+closed with a wooden peg at each end, a start was made.  The skins were
+rolled up into bundles and upon these were bound the earthen pots and
+the bags containing the very scanty store of grain.  This grain was the
+seed of the "twa" grass, plundered from the store-houses of ants.  The
+women and children were loaded to their utmost capacity of draught,
+whilst the men carried nothing but their bows and arrows, and their
+digging sticks.  These last were pointed pegs of very hard wood, about
+eighteen inches long, stuck through round stones four or five inches in
+diameter, which had been pierced for the purpose.  The object of the
+stone was to give the sticks weight in the digging.
+
+The oldest of the women was charged with the important duty of carrying
+fire.  The Bushman knew no metal and, consequently, had no tinderbox, so
+his only way of kindling fire was by the long and laborious process of
+twirling a stick with the point inserted in a log, between the palms of
+the hands.  Thus whenever a move was made from one place to another, one
+of the party was appointed fire-carrier.  When the two sticks which
+invariably were carried had nearly burnt out, a halt was called and a
+fire lit from twigs; in this two fresh sticks were lighted; these would
+then be carried forward another stage.  As a matter of fact Kanu had
+learnt the use of tinder from the Hottentots, and had, as a great
+miracle, kindled some dry and pulverised bark from a spark generated by
+striking a fragment of iron which he picked up at the spot where some
+European hunters had camped, upon a flake of quartz.  But, after the
+principle enunciated by a modern philosopher, that it is a mistake to
+call down fire from Heaven whenever you cannot lay your hand upon the
+matchbox, Kanu rightly judged that his miracle would lose some of its
+most important advantages if repeated too often, so he reserved it for
+great emergencies, and allowed the time-honoured plan of fire-carrying
+from place to place to continue.  In this Kanu showed a very sound
+political instinct, and his example might be profitably followed by many
+reformers whose impatience to put the whole world straight all at once,
+often defeats its own ends.
+
+Consider, for a moment, what the result of a popularising of the
+tinderbox would have been:--In the first place what was looked upon as a
+miracle would have ceased to be regarded as such and, with the
+miraculous, a good deal of Kanu's influence would have gone.  Then,--the
+old woman whose function it was to carry fire-sticks would not alone
+have lost her importance, but would have had to carry heavy loads like
+the other women.
+
+Not only she, but her immediate relations, might have resented this,
+and, accordingly, Kanu would probably have weakened the allegiance of at
+least one-fourth of his subjects.  There is nothing, in the humble
+opinion of the writer, which proves Kanu's natural fitness for
+leadership so much as his having decided against the popularising of the
+tinderbox.
+
+Now that the lightning-sign, which had been so long and so anxiously
+waited for, had come, the black despair which Kanu and his companions
+had been the prey of during the last few months, gave way to sanguine
+hope.  They knew that the ordeal which had to be endured,--the crossing
+of the black belt of scorched desert which lay between them and the
+track of the thunder shower, would strain their endurance to the utmost,
+but such experiences are but incidents in the life of the Bushman--and
+he takes them as they come, without repining at Fate.  In their
+different hunting trips they had exhausted all the caches of
+water-filled eggshells within a distance of two days' march, but there
+was one cache far away on the edge of the great dune-region to the
+north-eastward which, if they could manage to hold out for four days on
+the brackish liquid which they were carrying and,--if the treasure
+should prove not to have been broached, would relieve their necessities
+for the moment, and enable them to make a successful dash for the deep
+and precipitous gorge through which the great Gariep winds on its
+mysterious course to the ocean.
+
+After descending the mountain the Bushmen struck across the plain in
+single file, heading due north-east.  The men stalked ahead, trusting
+that their dread of prowling beasts of prey would keep the women and
+children, heavily laden as they were, close behind.  Soon the liquid
+beams of the Morning Star warned them that the friendly night was nearly
+over, and they quickened their paces so as to reach a long, low ridge
+dotted with _karee_ bushes and large arboreal aloes, which lay some
+distance ahead, and on the side of which some protection might be
+afforded from the raging sun.  When day broke this ridge loomed large
+before them in the midst of the oceanlike plain, but before they reached
+it the day was well on towards noon.  Then water was dealt out in
+sparing quantities to human beings and dogs alike, and the weary
+wayfarers scattered about seeking shade under rock, tree and shrub.
+
+In several directions could be seen clouds of dust arising,--indications
+of the migrating herds of game; far and near the silent sand-spouts
+glided about in stately rhythm, like spectres of the daytime threading
+some mysterious dance-measure.  Early in the afternoon the clean-cut
+margin of a snow-white cloud projected slightly above the north-eastern
+horizon.  This turned the expectation of rain falling upon the plains
+before them to a certainty, but the track of the storm-cloud was an
+appalling distance ahead.
+
+When the sun had somewhat declined another start was made.  The women
+now kept together, while the men scattered out on other side of the
+course with digging-picks in readiness to unearth roots and tubers
+should the drought have left any indication of their existence above
+ground.  Each warrior wore a skin fillet around his head, into which his
+supply of poisoned arrows was stuck by the points, the shafts standing
+straight up in a circle reaching high above him.  This served the double
+purpose of having the arrows where they could be easily got at when
+required, and making the braves look fierce and formidable in the event
+of an enemy being met with.
+
+The unbroken plain now lay before them in all its solitary horror; their
+only hope of relief lay a three-days agony in front.  The sand,--so hot
+in Summer on the plains of Bushmanland that one can cook an egg in it
+several inches below the surface,--scorched their feet; it even caused
+the dogs to roll over and lie on their backs, howling from the pain they
+suffered.
+
+As night fell the men closed in, bringing the scanty supply of lizards,
+striped-faced desert mice with long, bushy tails, roots and other desert
+produce which they had succeeded in capturing or unearthing.  The little
+band pressed on silently over the sand which had now begun somewhat to
+cool down, and beneath the stars which seemed so close above them in the
+purple vault.  Some of the men now remained behind to assist the weaker
+of the women, who were lagging, by relieving them of portions of their
+heavy loads.
+
+At each halt which was made for the purpose of rekindling the
+fire-sticks, all but the one charged with the duty of kindling the fire
+lay down and sank at once into deep sleep.  When the sticks were once
+more properly alight the sleepers would be wakened by a touch and, once
+more, the party would steal, ghost-like, across the velvet-like sand.
+
+Day broke, and when the party halted a little shade was obtained by
+stretching skins over sticks stuck into the ground.  Then a fire was
+soon kindled and the food obtained on the previous day cooked and eaten.
+Another sparing ration of water was issued and, in spite of its
+scarcity, and of the fact that every drop was as it were their
+life-blood, a small libation was poured out on the sand to propitiate
+the spirits of the sky who so greedily drank up moisture from the
+thirsty earth.
+
+It was late in the afternoon of the third day when they reached the spot
+where the water-filled eggshells lay buried.  Some of the women and
+children had been left half a day's march behind, where they had dropped
+from thirst and exhaustion.  Fortunately the cache was found to be
+intact.  During the night a supply of water was sent back to those left
+behind, and early in the forenoon of next day the whole party was once
+more together.  Their only loss was that of their best dog; the animal
+went mad while they were digging for the water, and rushed away to meet
+its death alone among the dunes.
+
+They rested all that day as well as the next night, and it was on the
+following day that Kanu made the great discovery which more than ever
+convinced his followers of their leader's supernatural powers.  Before
+dawn Kanu left the encampment on a solitary hunting expedition.
+Skirting the edge of the dune-tract he went on and on, wondering sorely
+at the absence of game of every description.  Then he noticed a number
+of tracks of jackals, all converging towards one point.  Following one
+of these he was led to a narrow opening in a low, overhanging ledge of
+rock.  Entering the opening and groping about, he found himself in a
+small, oblong cave.  His heart beat fast, for he distinctly smelt water.
+Feeling along the walls of the cavern he came to an inner opening, of
+size just sufficient to admit the body of a man.  This proved to be the
+mouth of a passage which dipped inward at a steep angle.  Kanu held his
+bow by one end and tried to find the bottom of the shaft, but
+unsuccessfully.  Then he carefully let himself down, feet first.  Soon
+he found himself standing,--or rather half-reclining,--with his feet in
+icy cold water, but the passage was so narrow that he could not stoop
+sufficiently to reach the water even with his hands.
+
+With some difficulty he managed to extricate himself, and then he turned
+and let himself down head first, having previously placed his bow across
+the opening and fastened a thong to it, so as to enable him to work his
+way back again.  He drank his fill of water more delicious than anything
+he had tasted for years past and then hastened back to where he had left
+his companions.
+
+Great were the rejoicings over what to all appearances was a permanent
+spring, the water of which was absolutely perfect in quality.  The
+little community at once decided to make the cave their head quarters.
+Food was plentiful and easy to obtain.  On account of the general
+drought no water was to be found anywhere else in the neighbourhood;
+consequently, numbers of jackals visited the spot every night.  Of
+these, the flesh of which is looked upon by the Bushman as being a
+special delicacy, as many as were required for consumption were slain.
+Later, when the rains came, the herds of game returned; moreover, the
+vicinity proved to be rich in "veldkost," which is the name by which the
+edible bulbs and tubers with which the desert sometimes abounds, are
+known by.
+
+The years went by and these Bushmen, isolated as they were from the rest
+of mankind, led a life of absolutely ideal happiness from their own
+point of view.  They had no want ungratified; to them the desert and
+what it contained were all-sufficing.  There were no other human
+creatures anywhere near them, so they had nothing to fear.
+
+It is a mistake to suppose that the life of the Bushmen was solely that
+of animals.  Besides painting, they possessed the art of mimicry to a
+high degree and were, moreover, excellent actors.  Their plays were
+hunting scenes, the characters being the different animals they were
+accustomed to hunt.  The cries, movements and peculiarities of such were
+imitated as accurately as was possible by human beings, and a curious
+tincture of humour,--humour of a kind almost unintelligible to the
+civilised mind, was imported into the personifications.  For instance:
+the shifts and stratagems by means of which a trio of ostriches will
+endeavour to lead an enemy away from their nest,--the simulated alarm of
+the birds when the enemy takes a wrong direction and the comparative
+absence of any sign of uneasiness if he takes the right one, were hit
+off to the life and accentuated with an amount of drollery one might
+think the subject incapable of sustaining.
+
+The favourite episode for dramatic representation was the robbing of the
+lion of his prey.  The lion's favourite time for killing is just before
+daybreak.  After he has killed he loves to drain, at his ease, every
+drop of blood from the carcase of his quarry.  The act of killing by the
+king-killer of the wilderness is a noisy affair and, if it happened
+within a radius of several miles, and the wind were not unfavourable,
+the sound was almost sure to reach the keen ears of the pygmies.  Then
+all would turn out, each being armed with a firebrand and carrying a
+bundle of dry, inflammable grass and twigs.
+
+Approaching the spot where the kill had taken place, from different
+directions, the Bushmen would begin to shout and jeer at the lion and
+call him by all sorts of ridiculous and insulting terms.  If he
+attempted to attack, some of the inflammable stuff would at once be
+ignited, and the lion, no matter how enraged, would always turn tail and
+retreat from the blaze.  All this time the circle would be gradually
+closing in, leaving a gap through which the baffled and furious animal
+could beat a retreat, snarling and showing his teeth.
+
+In the Bushman's moonlit theatre this scene would be acted with
+astonishing skill and realism.  In regions where the clans were thickly
+distributed, a good actor of the lion's part in this popular play would
+be as sure of a welcome as if he were a great painter, and thus could
+pick and choose his society among the different communities.
+
+Kanu had much to tell his fellows about his varied experiences, and the
+relation of these was always more than half acted.  The old, bald-headed
+man with the white beard who had sentenced him to be whipped, would have
+felt his dignity to be seriously compromised if he had seen his former
+victim perched on a rock mimicking him, and declaiming gibberish to a
+group of convulsed admirers; accentuating in a most preposterous manner
+every one of His Worshipful peculiarities.
+
+It was in the hunting-field that the true potency of the Bushman was
+shown.  Inside a wicker framework covered with the skin of an ostrich,
+the hunter would stalk in among an unsuspecting flock of feeding birds.
+With slow, swaying stride,--the long neck bent down and the beak bobbing
+as though pecking at the green beetles on the bushes, the counterfeit
+presentment of a stately, full-plumaged male would edge its way in,
+making the characteristic by-play which the male adopts when he wants to
+attract the females by an affective display of his beauties.  Then, one
+by one, the members of the doomed flock would bite the dust, and the
+slayer, doffing his disguise, would proceed to cut up the carcases into
+pieces convenient for roasting,--or else collect fuel pending the
+arrival of his friends with the fire-stick.
+
+Thus passed the halcyon days.  Kanu and his men became muscular and
+wiry; the women and children fat and sleek.  Kanu was venerated by his
+subjects as a powerful but beneficent magician, who had gone to some
+wonderful "other" world and returned laden with gifts of useful
+knowledge.  Ksoa, Delilah-like, tried to get him to reveal to her the
+secret of his power, so he told her that he had been taken captive once
+by a monstrous being which was about to eat him,--when a blind lioness
+of wonderful size, strength and beauty had set him free and destroyed
+his enemy.  This lioness had given him as a charm a hair out of her own
+splendid mane.  So long, he said, as this hair were not stolen from him,
+or lost, all would go well with him and his.  If, however, the hair were
+to be stolen,--not alone would good fortune depart from Kanu and his
+clan, but dire disaster would fall upon the stealer.
+
+One day, after much persuasion, Kanu consented to show his wife the
+talisman.  It had been carefully rolled around a dry leaf; Ksoa
+marvelled greatly as she saw its length uncoiled and saw how it glinted
+in the sun.  She did not dare to touch it, but begged of her lord to put
+the precious thing safely away at once, lest anything should happen to
+it.
+
+"What a great and wonderful lioness that must have been.--And a lioness
+with a mane," she commented, in an awed whisper.
+
+"Yes," answered Kanu, with a sigh.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINETEEN.
+
+HOW STEPHANUS PURSUED GIDEON.
+
+Early in the morning after the arrival of Stephanus, the mob of cattle
+was driven in and with the assistance of some of the Hottentots a fairly
+good span of oxen was sorted out.  Then the wagon was loaded with
+provisions and water, and Stephanus started in pursuit of the brother
+who had fled before his accusing face.  Elsie insisted on accompanying
+her father; Stephanus, full of the trust in Providence which he had
+attained to through suffering,--imbued with that sublime confidence
+which had come to him in his nine years of repentance, prayer and
+watching,--made no objection.
+
+A great happiness welled up in Aletta's heart and seemed to transfigure
+her, body and soul.  She felt that her dark hour had indeed been the
+prelude to a day brighter than her starved soul had known for many
+years.  With feverish haste she completed the preparations for
+departure, and when the wagon rolled away up the steep kloof-track, its
+fresh team of sixteen drawing it with hardly an effort, she watched it
+until her sight grew dim with happy tears.  Then she and Stephanus knelt
+down and he breathed forth a prayer as humbly exultant as ever the rapt
+singer of Israel uttered like trumpet blast whose sound still fills the
+centuries.
+
+Afterwards, Stephanus followed the wagon on horseback, and Aletta turned
+to the joyful task of garnishing the dismal, unkempt house in
+preparation for her husband's return.
+
+At the top of the saddle the oxen were outspanned and driven to the
+spring to take their last drink before entering the region of thirst.
+Stephanus, like Gideon--but with what different feelings--looked back
+and let his eye luxuriate upon the fertile valley.  How sweet and
+peaceful it all looked.--How the frowning krantzes shut it in on each
+side, their stark forms accentuating the soft slopes that billowed away
+from their bases.  He could see the patch of scrub that hid the
+spring,--and the silvern water issuing from it,--like a jewelled
+pendant.  The forenoon sun took the foliage at an angle which turned its
+usual hue to a rich, full tint.  That spot was the pivot upon which his
+life and that of his brother had turned, and from which they had been
+whirled off into such strange regions.
+
+He turned his gaze until it swept the blackened desert across which his
+course lay, but the prospect had for him no dismay.  He knew by
+experience the dangers that lay before him, but his faith was to him as
+a strong shield and a buckler of might against all evil.  Elsie stood at
+his side and held his horny, toil-worn hand between hers that were so
+soft and white.  Few words passed between the father and daughter; they
+were content just to be together.  She, happy in the fulfilment of her
+long-deferred hope,--he, exultant with the feeling that he was fighting
+Satan for his brother's soul and confident of victory.
+
+The thoughts of Stephanus moved upon a stage higher than Elsie's could
+attain to.  To Stephanus the presence of his beloved child was enough to
+fill his heart with joy.  She seemed to be the embodiment of peace,--the
+dove that had come back across the troubled waters of his life.  But
+over and above this towered high the realisation of the task laid upon
+him,--the lifting of his brother's life from the slough in which it had
+been so long sunk.  To Elsie happiness and duty were one; to her father
+his great happiness and his burning responsibility were different and,
+as it were, filled separate chambers of his mind.
+
+It was noon by the time the oxen again stood in the yoke.  The trail of
+Gideon's wagon lay plainly marked across the sand, far below.  Stephanus
+could see between the stones--close to where he stood, the clear print
+of his brother's large _veldschoen_; Gideon had here paced restlessly to
+and fro.  Yonder was the spot where he had stood gazing back into the
+valley which he deemed he had left for ever; there he had paused to cast
+his haggard eyes across the desert which he meant should be his
+dwelling-place henceforth.  It seemed to Stephanus as though he could
+enter into all the phases of his brother's mind at this spot where the
+physical conditions seemed to suggest appraisement of the probabilities
+of the future as well as of the results of the past.  He felt as though
+standing on the boundary-line between two worlds.
+
+Then, with brake-shoe fixed to the wheel the wagon jolted heavily down
+the mountain side until it reached the red and burning sand-waste which
+seemed to stretch northward to infinity.
+
+At every outspan place could be seen the remains of the fires lit by the
+fugitive.  These places were far apart; it was clear that Gideon had
+made desperate efforts to put as many miles as possible between himself
+and his injured brother.
+
+The wilderness was in a frightful state of aridity, so the unhappy
+cattle suffered much from thirst.  Stephanus always let them rest in the
+heat of the day; in the evening he would inspan and then push on through
+the cool hours of the night.  The leader had no difficulty, by the
+diffused light of the stars, in following the wheel-tracks.
+
+Elsie would lie sleeping in the wagon, undisturbed by the least jolt,
+for the surface of the plain was as soft as down.  Her father would walk
+ahead under the liquid stars, which seemed to look down upon him with
+more than human sympathy and understanding.  During his captivity
+Stephanus had never seen the sky at night; thus, the memory of what had
+always strongly influenced him became idealised in his awakened and
+alert soul.  Now, the vastness and the thrilling mystery of the night
+skies seemed to have fused with his purpose, and his spirit inhabited
+the infinite.
+
+The travellers had brought enough water in kegs for their own personal
+needs, but day by day the agonies of the wretched cattle increased.  The
+Hottentot driver and leader became more and more uneasy, feeling
+themselves in danger of that worst of all deaths,--a long-drawn death of
+thirst in the desert.  But Stephanus was sustained by his lofty trust,
+and never doubted that they would issue safely from their difficulties.
+
+Each forenoon as the mocking mirage was painted athwart the northern
+sky, the clear, wide stream of the far-fountained Gariep, with its
+fringe of vivid green boskage, seemed as though lifted out of the depths
+of the awful gorge and hung across the heavens for their torment.
+
+One morning they saw the red-mounded dunes quivering far ahead in the
+ratified air, slightly to their right.  Stephanus and the Hottentots
+knew this region by repute, and accordingly recognised the fact that
+their last and most terrible effort was now at hand,--that now they
+would have to plough their way through some ten miles of sand so light
+and loose that the wheels of the wagon would sink in it to the axles.
+Once through the sand-hills, they would be within a day's journey of
+that cleft in the black mountains through which the cattle might be
+driven to the river.
+
+The day smote them with fury.  The sand became so hot that it blistered
+the soles of their feet through the _veldschoens_.  The wind, heavily
+charged with fine, red sand, was moaning and shrieking across the waste.
+Their only chance lay in keeping moving, for the drifting sand would
+have buried the wagon, if stationary, in a few hours.  But the moment
+came when the unhappy cattle were unable to advance with the wagon
+another step, so had to be outspanned.
+
+The oxen staggered away for a few paces and sank exhausted to the
+ground.  It was clear that without water, not one of them would ever
+rise again.  It was now the eighth day since they had last drunk their
+fill.  The Hottentots surrendered themselves to despair.  Stephanus
+knelt in the sand and lifted heart and voice in supplication to his God.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY.
+
+THE END OF THE FEUD.
+
+One morning Kanu and his men, who had shortly before left their place of
+abode on a hunting expedition, were astonished at seeing the white tent
+of a wagon slowing moving through the sand dunes at a short distance
+from them.  They at once dropped in their tracks and then crept into
+concealment for the purpose of discussing the situation.  The Bushmen,
+although the different clans often quarrelled among themselves, had one
+sentiment in common,--hatred of the European.  After they returned to
+the cave there was a general furbishing-up of the best arrows, a testing
+and a tightening of the bow-strings and a performance of the war
+sacrifice.  This last consisted in drawing a small quantity of blood
+from the right knee of each warrior, mixing it in an earthen bowl with a
+small quantity of arrow-poison and pouring the mixture out upon the
+ashes of the previous night's fire.  Then, with arrows erect around
+their heads, they looked impatiently towards their leader for the signal
+to attack.
+
+The wagon was only about a couple of miles away; the white tent
+intermittently gleaming between the driving clouds of sand.  Among the
+broken hillocks the strangers were quite at the mercy of an attacking
+force, no matter how small.  Thus, the pygmies might have crept right up
+to the wagon without being noticed, and discharged their deadly shafts
+from within point-blank range, settling the business with one noiseless
+volley.  But Kanu did not give the signal; he sat with his head bowed in
+thought, and his braves looked at him and at each other in astonishment.
+
+Kanu reflected.  He was aware of many things beyond the cognisance of
+his followers.  One thing had specially impressed him during his
+captivity,--the implacable vengeance with which the Boers pursued the
+marauders who murdered their friends and stole their cattle.  This wagon
+had certainly come much farther than any wagon had ever come before, and
+it was not likely to be followed by others.  Better not interfere with
+it.  The cave had not been discovered; it was impossible that any white
+men would come and settle in the waterless neighbourhood.  Tempting as
+was the opportunity of wreaking vengeance for many wrongs, policy
+demanded that they should forego it, so Kanu threw down his bow, plucked
+the arrows from his head and said that he had been told by the spirits
+not to attack these people.
+
+It was a critical moment and, had Kanu's authority not been far more
+strong than that which the Bushman leader usually held over his
+followers, his orders would have been disregarded.  However, no attack
+was made and the wagon was permitted to proceed upon its laboured course
+unmolested,--the people with it little deeming of their narrow escape.
+
+Two days afterwards another wagon was reported to be proceeding along
+the same course, and Kanu saw by the demeanour of his followers that he
+would probably be unable to restrain them from attacking, so he led them
+forth, and the little band took up its position in a patch of scrub
+which crowned a small sand-hill overlooking the two-days-old track.
+
+The travellers were evidently in terrible straits, and before they
+reached the ambush the oxen collapsed.  Leaving his braves with strict
+injunctions not to move before his return, Kanu went towards the wagon
+for the purpose of reconnoitring.  Creeping sinuously among the hollows
+between the hillocks over which the streaming sand was being swept like
+spray from the crests of waves, he crept up to within a few yards of the
+wagon and lay, concealed by a bush, watching it intently.
+
+Just then Elsie came out of the tent and stood, protecting her face from
+the stinging sand with her hands, and with her hair streaming in the
+wind.
+
+Kanu started.  The figure and the hair suggested Elsie, but he could not
+see the face, and the girl had grown almost beyond recognition.  Then
+Stephanus arose from where he had been kneeling at the other side of the
+wagon and stood at his daughter's side.  Kanu recognised his former
+master in an instant, and now had no doubt as to Elsie's identity.
+Throwing down his bow and arrows, he strode forward and called out:--
+
+"Baas Stephanus--Miss Elsie--here is Kanu."
+
+Stephanus turned and gazed at the Bushman with astonishment.  Elsie
+stepped forward with hands outstretched to greet her old guide and
+preserver.
+
+"Kanu," she cried, "can you get us water?"
+
+"Yes,--the water is close at hand."
+
+"God, who has sent this creature to succour us, I thank thee," said
+Stephanus, solemnly.
+
+"Baas must give me a small present of tobacco, so that I may soothe the
+hearth of my people," said Kanu.
+
+With his hands full of the much-coveted treasure Kanu sped back to his
+impatient band.  No one knows how, when or where the Bushmen learnt the
+use of tobacco.  When first the Europeans came in contact with them they
+were evidently accustomed to its use.  In an instant the rancour of the
+warriors was turned into extravagant delight.  With these children of
+the wilderness the transition from ferocity to amiability was
+instantaneous, and the one sentiment arose as unreasonably and inspired
+them as completely as the other.
+
+Immediately they crowded around the wagon, ready to assist with all
+their power those who a few minutes previously they would have delighted
+to put to a cruel death.
+
+Soon every keg and other utensil in the wagon capable of holding water
+was carried over to the spring and then the water was dealt out by
+willing hands as fast as circumstances would permit.  Vessels were
+afterwards borne from one to the other of the famishing oxen and each
+animal was allowed to take a sup at a time.  All through the afternoon
+this went on, until the cattle were once more able to arise.
+
+Kanu told Stephanus of another spring which he had discovered among the
+mountains to the north-west, about half a day's journey away, and
+thither the oxen were taken during the night, and allowed to drink their
+fill.  Then, after a day's rest they were driven back to the wagon.
+
+The Bushmen and their womenkind were, in the meantime, made happy with
+liberal presents of tobacco, coffee and sugar.  The tobacco had a most
+curious effect upon them.  They smoked it through a rough kind of a
+hookah made out of a hartebeeste's horn, a stone bowl and a piece of
+reed a few inches in length.  There was no mouth-piece, so the smoker
+pressed his mouth into the natural aperture at the base of the horn, and
+inhaled the smoke.  It was thus that they were accustomed to smoke the
+"dagga" or wild hemp.  After each smoker had filled his lungs and again
+emptied them about a dozen times, he passed on the pipe to a companion,
+and then laid himself upon the ground where, after becoming slightly
+epileptic, he stiffened from head to feet and lay unconscious and
+scarcely breathing for some minutes.
+
+The women enjoyed the coffee and sugar, which were delicacies they knew
+of only by report, with great zest.  They were not satisfied with merely
+drinking the beverage, but insisted on eating the grounds also.
+
+These artless, cruel, innocent and murderous savages made their guests
+royally welcome, when the latter visited the camp.  They entertained the
+strangers with songs, dances and dramatic performances, and presented
+them with a supply of edible roots some of which proved exceedingly good
+eating.
+
+Stephanus soon ascertained from Kanu that Gideon's wagon had passed but
+a few days previously.  It was evident that Gideon meant to cross the
+dune-tract at its junction with the mountain range that skirts the river
+gorge, and then make for the eastward.
+
+Kanu accompanied them when they returned to the wagon, and then he and
+Elsie had a long talk, relating to each other their respective
+adventures since they had last met.  Elsie was struck by an idea.
+
+"Kanu,--will you do something for me?"
+
+"Anything that young mistress asks of me."
+
+"Well,--I want you to go after the other wagon, steal all the oxen and
+horses and bring them to me."
+
+"Yes,--that can easily be done."
+
+"Mind,--you are not to kill or harm anyone, but just to bring the cattle
+and horses to me."
+
+"Yes, I understand."
+
+In the cool of the evening a start was made.  The oxen, refreshed by
+their drink, stepped out briskly.  Thus, long before daylight came again
+they had succeeded in passing through the heavy sand.  The ground now
+immediately before them was easy to travel over.
+
+When outspanned for breakfast they saw a lot of cattle and some horses
+being driven towards them.  These were Gideon's,--stolen by the Bushmen
+at Elsie's instigation.  Stephanus, who had not been told of the plot,
+laughed loud and long at Elsie's stratagem for stopping Gideon's flight.
+
+Gideon's journey across the desert had not been so difficult as was that
+of his pursuer.  His team was composed of picked oxen that were well
+accustomed to such work, and the day on which fell the crisis of the
+journey,--the crossing of the dune-belt,--was comparatively cool.
+Nevertheless, the cattle were almost exhausted when he outspanned on the
+salt-impregnated ridge on which the Mission Station of Pella now
+stands--just opposite the head of the deep kloof which breaks through
+the otherwise impassable mountains, thus affording a way to the Orange
+River.  This kloof is about eight miles long, and the cattle were hardly
+able to stagger down it to the drinking place.  When the animals smelt
+the water from afar they uttered pitiful lowings, and those that were
+less exhausted broke into a stumbling run.  It was found impossible to
+bring the span back to the wagon until they had rested for a couple of
+days.
+
+Gideon, chafing with impatience, remained with the wagon.  The servants
+replenished the kegs with water and then returned to the river bank,
+where they remained with the cattle.
+
+Gideon, in his loneliness, was the prey of the most miserable
+apprehensions.  In estimating possibilities he had always endeavoured to
+place himself in his brother's situation and by this means had driven
+from his mind the possibility of Stephanus being otherwise than
+absolutely implacable.  He pictured the injured man hurrying,
+immediately after his release, to the farm, his whole mind bent on the
+wreaking of his long-panted-for revenge.  Then, how he would have foamed
+with fury at finding that the one in whose blood he had so longed to
+imbue his fingers, had escaped.  Of course a hot pursuit would be
+immediately undertaken, and it would be as keen and relentless as that
+of a blood-hound.  The thought of this man, whose eyes he dreaded more
+than he dreaded the face of Death, pressing furiously after him across
+the blackened waste was ever before his vision, sleeping or waking.
+
+He had not the slightest doubt that Stephanus was following him, for it
+was exactly what he felt he would have done himself to Stephanus under
+similar circumstances, but he drew a little comfort from the conclusion
+that his pursuer could not have crossed the scorched desert anything
+like as quickly as he himself had done.  The raging heat of the past few
+days had been as balm to his suffering spirit.  Others had died in
+Bushmanland--even when it had not been as arid as it now was; why not
+Stephanus?  But, he reflected, he had never expected his hotheaded
+brother,--the restless, passionate man who could never brook restraint
+in any form, to survive his long term of imprisonment; his heart should
+have broken years ago.
+
+Well,--here in the desert it was a case of man to man, and each was a
+law unto himself.  One thing was sure: if his vengeful brother persisted
+in following him now,--if Stephanus would not even leave him the starved
+desert as his lonely portion,--then the wide earth was not spacious
+enough to hold them both.  He was doing his best to put the miles
+between them; if Stephanus followed he did so at his own risk and must
+abide by the consequences.
+
+But for the dread of Hell-fire Gideon would have ended it all years ago,
+by means of a bullet through his own brain.  That would be nothing,--the
+bullet,--but Gideon imagined his soul standing, immediately afterwards,
+naked before the vestibule of the Pit, listening to the roaring of the
+flames and the shrieks of the damned, and awaiting its own summons to
+enter.
+
+After the cattle and horses had been driven back to the wagon from the
+river, it was necessary for them to be allowed a night's grazing on the
+edge of the plains, no grass having been found on the river bank.  So
+the horses were hobbled and turned out to graze with the oxen.  The
+leader was strictly enjoined to get up before daylight next morning and
+bring the animals back to the wagon in time to admit of an early start
+being made.  There were tracks of lions visible here and there, but the
+risk of beasts of prey had to be taken.  Gideon now meant to turn due
+east, cross the "neck" which connects the dune-tract with the river
+mountains, and plunge into the unknown country beyond.
+
+Next morning, soon after daylight, the herd returned, terrified, and
+reported that both oxen and horses had been driven off by Bushmen.
+Gideon's heart stood still.  This appeared to be proof of what he had
+often suspected, that the Lord had singled him out for relentless
+persecution because he had done His work of vengeance.  However, there
+was only one thing now to be done: to pursue the marauders and attack
+them at all hazards.  Arming the leader and driver and taking his own
+gun, he left the wagon and its contents to their fate and started on the
+spoor.
+
+To his surprise he found that the spoor, instead of leading into the
+rough ground, as was invariably the case when animals were stolen by
+Bushman marauders, led back along the track made by his own wagon.
+After walking for about an hour he reached the top of a low ridge from
+which the eye could range for an immense distance across the plains.
+Then Gideon saw what made the blood curdle in his veins with horror.  A
+wagon which he knew must be that of Stephanus was approaching and behind
+it was being driven a mob of loose cattle and horses which he could not
+doubt were his own.  The Hottentots raised a shout of joy; to their
+astonishment Gideon turned and fled back across the plains towards his
+wagon.
+
+The miserable man now became insane in his terror.  His only thought was
+to escape,--to hide from the face of the man he had so greatly wronged.
+Fear lent wings to his feet and, by the time Stephanus had reached the
+top of the ridge where the two Hottentots were waiting in their
+perplexity, Gideon had almost reached his wagon.  Stephanus, overjoyed
+at hearing that his brother was so close at hand, at once mounted his
+horse and rode forward.
+
+Gideon took refuge in the wagon and laid himself down with his loaded
+gun in his hand.  He had made up his mind as to what he would do in this
+last emergency:--he would allow his brother to approach and, when he
+arrived within point-blank distance, would cover him with the gun and
+bid him stand.  Then he would solemnly warn Stephanus not to approach,
+holding him at parley where he stood.  If the warning should be
+disregarded Gideon determined to shoot his brother dead, but he hoped
+not to be driven to do this.  He would force Stephanus, under the muzzle
+of the gun, to swear to go back and trouble him no more.  He would
+say:--"Your life is mine, here in this lawless land, to destroy by the
+mere slight pressure of my finger upon the trigger against which it
+rests.--It is mine,--forfeit because you have pursued me when I tried my
+best to avoid you, and driven me to bay.--I give it to you in exchange
+for the wrong I have done you.  Take it and go in peace and I will never
+cross your path again,--but come one step nearer and you are a dead man
+with your blood upon your own revengeful soul."
+
+As the past is said to crowd upon the consciousness of a drowning man so
+these thoughts, wild and half-unformulated, hurtled against the
+distracted consciousness of Gideon van der Walt as he lay shaking in the
+wagon, holding his loaded gun with the muzzle projecting through the
+slit in the canvas which, he had made with his knife for the purpose.
+Every few seconds he lifted his head and glanced out with fevered eyes
+to see whether his enemy were approaching.  At length he saw what his
+eyes had been seeking with expectant dread; riding down the long slope
+swiftly on a stout pony was a man with a long, snow-white beard, whom he
+recognised as Stephanus.--But what did this mean? his brother was
+unarmed.--But perhaps the gun was concealed--slung from the saddle
+behind as guns were sometimes carried in the hunting-field.--No,--the
+pony swerved to avoid a shrub,--Stephanus was certainly unarmed.
+
+He was riding in his shirt-sleeves and not even a switch did he carry in
+his hand.  Surely, Gideon thought, the man who was engaged in this
+implacable pursuit could not expect his enemy to allow him to approach
+to within gripping distance.  No matter,--Gideon would challenge his
+brother when he came close, and bid him stand if he valued his life.--
+But would the man who had tenaciously held to a trail across Bushmanland
+in a black drought stand still when bidden?  Gideon felt sure that he
+would not.  Well,--he must shoot,--there was nothing else for it.
+
+As Stephanus came nearer Gideon could see clearly the silvery whiteness
+of his beard.  He thought of the last time his eyes had rested on his
+brother's face, when the sentence was pronounced, and that then the
+beard was as black as the wing of a raven.  Then a sudden horror struck
+him to the heart.--He could not--could not--stain his already guilty
+hands with this man's blood, after having ruined his life.  The
+threatened curse of Cain thundered in his ears.  With a wild shriek he
+sprang from the wagon, and fled among the naked, piled-up rocks which
+formed the base of the hideous mountain at the foot of which his wagon
+stood.
+
+Unheeding the shout of Stephanus, Gideon sped on, leaping from boulder
+to boulder in his mad endeavour to avoid the presence of the man against
+whom he had so terribly sinned.  By some curious trick of thought his
+brother, thus unarmed, was more formidable to his maddened and guilty
+soul than had he come with a primed and loaded gun.  A dread of some
+such fascination as the snake is said to exercise over his victim
+possessed him; he felt that once under his brother's eyes he would be
+bound and helpless.  It was a terrible illustration of the dread which
+the malefactor sometimes feels towards the one he has wronged.
+
+Stephanus followed steadily, his heart full of its lofty purpose.  He
+knew that his brother could not escape him now,--that the moment he had
+longed for through the slow years was at hand.  Serene in his trust,
+confident in his faith that Providence was directing his and Gideon's
+steps, and that neither could stumble until God's purpose had been
+fulfilled, he breasted the steep, rugged incline with a careful and
+methodical expenditure of energy.
+
+Soon the mountain narrowed to a wedge-shaped slope of an easier
+gradient, which culminated in a naked peak on each side of which a black
+gulf yawned.  Under this, at a sheer depth which it made the senses
+dizzy to contemplate, the mighty river, now turbidly brimming from the
+heavy thunder-rains which had fallen upon its course, rolled down
+between fringes of tall green timber.
+
+When Gideon saw that he was trapped,--that in front of him and on either
+hand were perpendicular cliffs, and behind him the brother whose face he
+dreaded more than the face of Death, such a mighty cry of agony and
+despair issued from his deep chest that the dead, black chasms seemed
+for the instant to become peopled with lost souls.  Then, nerved with
+the courage of despair he turned and faced his pursuer.
+
+"Keep back--keep back," he shouted hoarsely, "or I will shoot you dead
+and follow you to Hell over the krantz."
+
+"You cannot do it, my brother," called out Stephanus; "the shield of the
+Lord would turn the bullet aside and His hand would bear you up from the
+depths."
+
+"Stand, I tell you.--Stand.--Another step and you are a dead man."
+
+Stephanus continued to approach, so Gideon lifted his gun and pulled the
+trigger, but the powder flashed in the pan.  Stephanus never faltered,
+but walked composedly to where the desperate man was hastily
+endeavouring to reprime the gun with loose powder from his pocket.
+Stephanus laid his hand on his brother's shoulder and Gideon at once
+ceased in his attempt,--the gun slipped from his nervous fingers and
+crashed upon the stones, and he sank, swooning, to the ground.
+
+When he regained consciousness Gideon found himself supported by the
+arms of his brother, whose eyes, deep with love and dimmed with pity,
+looked steadily into his own.  Then his sin, his anguish and his terror
+slipped from him like a cast-off garment, and for the first time in his
+manhood he wept.
+
+It did not need much to be said on either side for an understanding,
+full and complete, to be at once established.  It was as though the
+unveiled souls looked at each other, revealing all and wholly revealed.
+
+Before turning to retrace their steps the brothers stood for a short
+space and looked forth across the awful, Titanic chaos, in the
+convoluted depths of which the weary river hurried improvidently along
+with its wasted load of fertilising wealth.  The sun had nearly sunk;
+already the dark chasms were full of almost opaque gloom, above which
+the rarefied air quivered around each sun-scorched mountain head,
+seeming to cap it with thin, colourless flame.
+
+In the north-east a great crudded cloud lifted its soaring towers into
+the blue heart of the awful aether.  Pure white on the side lit by the
+sun, on the other it was deep purple, and through it shafts of lightning
+were incessantly playing.  Higher and higher it towered, sweeping past
+at a distance of a few miles.  Now and then during the pauses of the
+thunder could be heard the low roar of the rain which fell like the
+fringe of a pall from the lower margin of the immense mass.  Then they
+knew that the black, two-years' drought was over,--that along the track
+over which they had so laboriously struggled a few short days since, the
+flowers would be bursting forth in a few hours and the rocky depressions
+brimming with silvern water.
+
+Stephanus' wagon had in the meantime arrived and was standing,
+outspanned, close to that of Gideon.  Elsie stood near it, her face
+turned to the mighty thunder-chariot from which a refreshing wind, laden
+with the ichor of the fallen rain, stirred the richness of her hair.
+She turned as her quick ear caught the sound of their approaching
+footsteps, and it seemed to them as though the Spirit of Peace inhabited
+her and looked out from the unfathomable depths of her sightless eyes.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+GLOSSARY.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+"Alle Wereld" "Whole world": equivalent to "Good gracious."
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Baas: Master.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Baviaan: Baboon.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Benauwdheid: Indigestion.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Bultong: Dried meat.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Cappie: A sun bonnet.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Dassie: A rock-rabbit or coney.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Field Cornet: rural official with powers resembling those of a Justice
+of the Peace.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Karee Bush: A shrub; Rhus viminalis.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Kloof: A valley.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Krantz: A cliff.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Nachtmaal: The Lord's Supper.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Onbeschafte: Unshorn; uncivilised.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Oom: Uncle.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Pan: A depression in the ground which sometimes contains water.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Rhebok: An antelope which frequents mountain heights.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Tanta: Aunt.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Schepsel: Creature; a term of tolerant contempt.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Stoep.  The platform in front of or at the side of a house.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Sassatyes: Flakes of pickled meat cooked with skewers stuck through
+them.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Spoor: Trail.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Veldschoen: A heelless, home-made boot.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Voorhuis: The sitting-room in a Boer homestead.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A Vendetta of the Desert, by William Charles Scully
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