very mightily surprised to see himself alive,
after all. He was exceedingly weak and somewhat misty as to
how it all had happened. But one thing he seemed to
remember--more than seemed, so strong, so plain, so deep was
his memory of it. He thought he recalled pain and
blindness, and a sudden light, in which he saw a face close
to his, a girl's face, pitiful, tender, loving, and charged
with more than all the sweetness of beauty that his sick
heart could long for. The thing was like one of those
dreams from which one wakes sad and thoughtful, as when one
has overstepped the boundary mark of life and cast an eye
on heaven.

"It was no face that he knew, and he turned on his pillow
to think of it. He could not believe it was a dream. 'It
was a soul,' he said to himself. 'I knew, I was sure, that
somewhere there was such a face, but it only came to my
eyes when I was on the borderland of death. If ever God
gave a thing to a mortal man, he should have given me that
woman.'

"So with such blasphemous thoughts he idled through the
days of his sickness, very quiet, very weak, and kind to
his wife beyond the ordinary. Of course she, poor woman,
knew nothing of the silly tale, and when her husband gave
her those little caresses one would not withhold from an
affectionate dog, she blessed God that he was come to
himself again. You see, Katje dear, that as a man demands
more than he can claim with right, a woman must often make
shift with less. It is well to learn this early.

"Stoffel grew well in time, and got about again. But the
stone had made less of a dent in his skull than the face in
his heart, and he was changed altogether. He served a false
god, but served it faithfully. He was very gentle and
patient with every one, almost like a saint, and he took
infinite pains with the work of his farm. He would hurt no
living thing--not even so much as lash a team of lazy oxen.
You would have thought Kafirs would have done as they
pleased with him, but they obeyed his least word, and hung
on his eyes for orders as though they worshipped him.
Kafirs and dogs will sometimes see farther than a
Christian.

"Meanwhile Greta came to die. It was a chill, perhaps, with
a trifle of fever on top of that, and it carried her off
like a candle-flame when it is blown out. She died well--
very well indeed. None of your whimpering and moaning and
slinking out of the back-door of life when nobody is
looking; nor that unconscious death th