ng man's
face.

"Then everything was in the fire. The two men fought in the
room like beasts, oversetting table and lamp, and stamping
into the fire on the hearth. Barend was mad with a passion
of long nursing, and hewed with his great fists till the
old man fell heavily to the ground, and lay moaning.

"Barend stood over him, glowering. 'Swine!' he said to his
father; 'swine and brute! get you out of this house to the
veld. You are no father of mine.'

"But the old man was much hurt, and lay where he had
fallen, groaning as though he had not heard.

"'I will have you out of this,' said the son. 'If you are
come to die, die on the road. I had wished you dead for
years.'

"So he wound his hand, with the knuckles all over blood, in
the old man's white hair, and threw open the door with his
other hand.

"'Out with you!' he shouted, and dragged him down the step
and into the yard. Yes, he dragged him across the yard to
the gate; and when he unfastened the gate the old man
opened his eyes and spoke.

"'Leave me here,' he said, speaking slowly and painfully.
'Leave me here, my son. Thus far I dragged my father.'"

The Vrouw Grobelaar, to point a weighty moral, turned her
face upon Katje. But that young lady was sleeping soundly
with her mouth open.

THE DREAM-FACE

"I wish," said Katje, looking up from her book--"I wish a
man would come and make me marry him."

The Vrouw Grobelaar wobbled where she sat with
stupefaction.

"Yes," continued Katje, musingly casting her eyes to the
rafters, "I wish a man would just take me by the hand--so--
and not listen to anything I said, nor let me go however I
should struggle, and carry me off on the peak of his saddle
and marry me. I think I would be willing to die for a man
who could do that."

The Vrouw Grobelaar found her voice at last. "Katje," she
said with deep-toned emphasis, "you are talking wickedness,
just wickedness. Do you think I would let a man--any man, or
perhaps an Englishman--carry you off like a strayed ewe?"

"The sort of man I'm thinking of," replied the maiden,
"wouldn't ask you for permission. He'd simply pick me up,
and away he'd go."

At times, and in certain matters, Vrouw Grobelaar would
display a ready acumen.

"Tell me, Katje," she said now, "who is this man?"

Then Katje dropped her book and, sitting upright with an
unimpeachable surprise, stared at the old lady.

"I'm not thinking of any man," she remarked calmly. "I was
just