eds, sometimes, of
an evening and at other times works mischief among the
crops and the cattle with spells that baffle the
husbandman.

So Katje laughed as she mentioned him, and the Vrouw
Grobelaar bridled ominously.

"You laugh," she said scathingly--"you laugh in the face of
wisdom and counsel as they laughed in Sodom and Gomorrah.
Yes; Tagalash, Katje! What have you to say against
Tagalash? You think, I suppose, that he doesn't exist. I
tell you, my girl, there's many a god of the heathen who is
a devil of the Christians. That's what Christianity is for--
to make devils of the gods of the heathen. And besides,
this Tagalash is not like the others. He has been seen."

She paused. "Who by, Tante?" I asked, while Katje affected
to whistle carelessly.

"Ah," she said, "you want to know? Well, Tagalash was seen
and felt and had speech of by one who told it afterwards
with white lips and fevered eyes that compelled belief. A
Boer woman, mind you, and no liar; the young wife of an
upright and well-seen Burgher, who had his farm an easy
four hours from here.

"It is Folly Joubert I mean, who married when she was
eighteen one Johannes Olivier, a youth with hair like an
Irishman--all red. I had known her somewhat, and she was
just that kind of girl in whom one feels the thrust of a
fate. She was thin, for one thing, and without any of the
comfortable comeliness that makes young men doubtful and
old men sure. She had a face that was always rapt, lips
that parted of themselves as if in wonder at great things
newly seen, and big troubled eyes that spoke, despite her
leanness and long legs, of a spring of hot blood crouching
within her. Yes, she seemed doomed to something far and
tragic, and outside the lives of decent stupid men.

"There was much bother, I believe, to persuade her to a
marriage with Johannes, though he was rich enough.

"Perhaps it was hard on her, but then it must have been
hard on him too. For he was another kind than she; just a
big youth that ate four times a day with desperation, and
lived the rest of the time as a tree lives. There is no
harm in such men, though; it is they that people this world
and have the right to guide it, for they put most into it
and hew most from it; but for those who are born with a
streak of heaven or hell in their fabric, they are heavy
companions at the best. But these two married at last, and
faced life like oxen that pull different ways in the same
yoke. And w