world--a big ten--stone girl
with red hair melted like a bubble.

"And how they hunted for her! Old Johannes van der Byl and
his sons went through the country like locusts, and with
them were a mob of relations and friends, and some
prospectors from the Hangklip who betted about it. Every
kloof was scoured, every Kafir stad and kraal turned inside
out, and the half of them burned. Their ponies streaked the
long grass of the veld for miles; the men, their loaded
rifles in hand, were abroad late and early; and yet they
never found even a shoe-sole or a shred of hair to give
them a clue. The witch-doctors would have been glad enough
to find her, for they were flogged from morning to night,
and Barend van der Byl beat the life out of one who did not
seem to be doing his best. If Freda had been anywhere in
the veld she would have been found, so fervently did the
Kafirs hunt her in order to get a little peace and
security.

"But nothing availed; no trace of her came to light, and
even the women of her family grew tired of weeping. But one
hot dusty afternoon, when her brothers Jacobus and Piet
were riding home from the fruitless search, they came upon
the Peruvian sitting under a bush smoking his yellow
cigarettes. He glanced up at them as they went past,
slavish as ever, yet still with that subtle significance of
mien that made him noteworthy, and suddenly Jacobus reined
up.

"'Piet,' he called, pointing with his sjambok. Look--our
last chance!'

"Piet did not understand.

"'We have been cutting the Kafir doctors into ribbons,'
explained Jacobus, 'and they were no good. But here is a
wizard, and a white one, who won't wait to be flogged. If
he can do nothing, then there is nothing to do. Let us
bring him along, Piet.'

"Piet was a fat youth, deadly strong, who never spoke while
there was work to do. He merely dropped from his saddle and
caught the Peruvian deftly by the back of the neck. The
smouser, of course, whined and squirmed, but Piet was the
man who broke the bullock's neck at Bothaskraal, and he
made no difficulty of tying the little man's wrists to his
off stirrup. All his trinkets and fallals they left behind,
and riding at a walk, talking calmly between themselves of
the buck with wide horns that the Predikant's cousin
missed, they dragged the little smouser to the homestead.

"'Several of the men had already come back, and when they
heard Jacobus's plan, some were openly afraid and wished to
have