ey
would know me? For I grow grey, and furrows deepen in the forehead the
dear hand will never smooth again. Remember me, then, only as I used to
be; my heart is the same always; in it the long, long years have wrought
no change._

_But what have the long years brought me? Experience, that savoury salt,
left where old tears have dried upon the shores of Time. Knowledge of my
fellow men and women, of all sorts and conditions, and the love of them.
Patience to bear what may yet have to be borne. Courage to encounter what
may yet have to be encountered. Fortitude to meet the end, where faith
holds up the Cross. Much have the long years brought me--besides your
first smile and your last kiss. For your next, I look past Death, God
aiding me, to the Eternal Life beyond...._

SOUTH WALES,

_April 22, 1909._

I

Upon a day near the end of August, one long, brilliant South African
winter, when the old Vierkleur waved over the Transvaal, and what is now
the Orange River Colony was the Orange Free State, with the Dutch canton
still showing on the staff-head corner of its tribarred flag, two large,
heavily-laden waggons rolled over the grass-veld, only now thinking about
changing from yellow into green. Many years previously the wheels of the
old voortrekkers had passed that way, bringing from Cape Colony, with the
household gods, goods and chattels, language and customs of the Dutch, the
slips of the pomegranate and peach and orange trees, whose abundant
blossoming dressed the orchards of the farms tucked away here and there in
the lap of the veld, with bridal white and pink, and hung their girdling
pomegranate hedges with stars of ruby red. But days and days, and nights
and nights of billowing, spreading, lonely sky-arched veld intervened
between each homestead.

The flat-topped bills were draped and folded in the opal haze of distance;
the sky was perfect turquoise; the rounded kopjes shone like pink topaz,
unclothed as yet with the young pale green bush. To the south there was a
veld fire leaping and dancing, with swirling columns of white smoke edged
with flame. But it was many miles away, and the north-west wind blew
strongly, driving some puffs of gold cloud before it. Perhaps there would
be rain ere long. There had been rain already in the foremost waggon, not
from the clouds, but from human eyes.

The broad wheels crashed on, rolling over the yellow grass and the dry
bushes. Lizards and other creeping crea