onlight, he
wrought like a giant possessed, whilst his child, lulled with the
condensed milk and water, in which biscuits had been sopped, lay sleeping
in the tavern upon a little iron bed.

He had had the waggon brought close up to the wired enclosure. All the
time he worked he kept a watch upon it. Did claws scrape the wide wheels
or scurrying feet patter across the shadows, he left off work until the
voracious creatures of the night were driven away.

The pale dawn came, and the east showed a lake of yellow.... When the
great South African sun rose and flooded the veld with miraculous liquid
ambers and flaming, melted rubies, the deep, wide grave at last was done.

He climbed out of it by the waggon ladder, struggling under the weight of
the last great basketful of stones and sandy earth. He dumped that down
by the graveside, and went to the waggon and removed all stains of toil,
and then set about making the last toilette of the beautiful woman who had
so loved that everything that touched her should be pure, and dainty, and
sweet.

He had dressed her silken, plentiful, squirrel-brown hair many times, for
the sheer love of its loveliness. With what care he now combed and brushed
and arranged the perfumed locks! He laid reverent kisses on the sealed
eyelids that his own hands had closed for ever; he whispered words of
passionate love, vows of undying gratitude and remembrance, in the
shell-like ears. He bathed with fresh water and reclad in fragrant linen
the exquisite body, upon which faint discolouring patches already heralded
the inevitable end. When he had done, he swathed her in a sheet, and
fetched a bolt of new white canvas from the store-waggon, and lined the
grave with that.

And then he placed a narrow mattress in it, and freshly covered pillows,
and brought her from the waggon, and to the grave, and carried her down
the light wooden ladder, and laid her in her last earthly home, with a
kiss from the lips that had never been her husband's. It was so cruel to
think of that. It was so hard to cover up the cold, sweet face again, but
he did it, and lapped the sheet over her and brought the canvas down.
Remained now to fill in her grave and fetch the man whose mouth should
speak over it the words that are of God.

But first--fill in the grave.

The cold sweat drenched him at the thought of heaping back those tons of
earth and stone above her, crushing with a frightful weight of inert
matter the bo