,
holding up his finger in the firelight. "She was thirty if she was a
day. Fellows don't generally fancy women that age; they like slips of
girls. But I set my heart on her the day I saw her. She belonged to the
chap I was with. He got her up north. There was a devil of a row about
his getting her, too; she'd got a nigger husband and two children;
didn't want to leave them, or some nonsense of that sort: you know what
these niggers are? Well, I tried to get the other fellow to let me have
her, but the devil a bit he would. I'd only got the other girl, and I
didn't much fancy her; she was only a child. Well, I went down Umtali
way and got a lot of liquor and stuff, and when I got back to camp I
found them clean dried out. They hadn't had a drop of liquor in camp for
ten days, and the rainy season coming on and no knowing when they'd get
any. Well, I'd a vatje of Old Dop as high as that--," indicating with
his hand an object about two feet high, "and the other fellow wanted to
buy it from me. I knew two of that. I said I wanted it for myself. He
offered me this, and he offered me that. At last I said, 'Well, just to
oblige you, I give you the vatje and you give me the girl!' And so
he did. Most people wouldn't have fancied a nigger girl who'd had two
nigger children, but I didn't mind; it's all the same to me. And I tell
you she worked. She made a garden, and she and the other girl worked in
it; I tell you I didn't need to buy a sixpence of food for them in six
months, and I used to sell green mealies and pumpkins to all the fellows
about. There weren't many flies on her, I tell you. She picked up
English quicker than I picked up her lingo, and took to wearing a dress
and shawl."

The stranger still sat motionless, looking into the fire.

Peter Halket reseated himself more comfortably before the fire. "Well,
I came home to the huts one day, rather suddenly, you know, to fetch
something; and what did I find? She, talking at the hut door with a
nigger man. Now it was my strict orders they were neither to speak a
word to a nigger man at all; so I asked what it was. And she answers, as
cool as can be, that he was a stranger going past on the road, and asked
her to give him a drink of water. Well, I just ordered him off. I didn't
think anything more about it. But I remember now. I saw him hanging
about the camp the day after. Well, she came to me the next day and
asked me for a lot of cartridges. She'd never asked me for any