rd and a white face, who
spoke Kafir better than he spoke the Taal. He sold thimbles
and pills and hymn-books to the wives and daughters of
Burghers, and grand watches and cheap diamonds to the
Kafirs. It was a dirty little trade, and there was nothing
about the man that streaked it with nobility. I remember a
Scotch smouser, who was called Peter Piper, who sold pills
like a chemist, and everybody liked him and respected him,
till he had his great dispute with the Predikant at
Dopfontein. But this little man was like a slimy thing made
to crawl on its belly; and many is the time he would have
been sjamboked from a door, were it not for--well, I don't
know. But he was such a mean helpless thing, that, when he
shrank away and looked up, with his white eyes staring and
his lips parted, not the most wrathful Burgher could lift a
whip.

"And even as he seemed to fear everything, the Kafirs
certainly feared him. Kafirs, you know, go naked to all the
little winds, and the breezes that will not hurt a thatch
carry death to them. They are deaf to God. but the devil
has but to whisper, and they hear. They bought shameful
watches and sleepy diamonds from the Peruvian, as they kill
a goat at the flowering of the crops--to appease something
that might else visit them in the night. It was a thing
much spoken of, and since even among the Burghers there are
folks who dirty their fingers with magic and wish-bones--ay,
you may well pout!--perhaps this had something to do with
the fact that he was never flogged to the beacons and
kicked across.

"In fact, there grew up about him a something of mystery,
uncanny and not respectable. The little plodding man who
went so meekly past our gates had a shadow one feared to
tread on.

"You won't remember, but you will have heard of, the
terrible to-do there was when Freda van der Byl
disappeared. She was a most ordinary girl, perhaps eighteen
years old, with a fine appetite, and nothing whatsoever
about her that was strange or extraordinary: and yet one
night she was missing, and it has never been set past doubt
who saw her last. She was on the stoop in the afternoon,
ate well at supper, went out then in the usual way to the
hut where the tobacco-sacks were, and never came in again.
She disappeared like a flame blown out, with never a spoor
to give direction to those that sought her, without a shred
of clothing on a thorn-bush to hint at a tale. She seemed
to have fled clean out of the