as very, very sorry for him. I don't think I cried, but
I may have. He was a fine tall man.

"One night my brothers came in just as I was going to bed,
and one stood in the door while the other whispered to my
mother. She looked up and saw me standing there.

"'Go to bed,' she said.

"'What is it?' I asked.

"'Go to bed,' said my brother.

"'No.' I said. 'Tell me, is it Fanie?'

"My brother looked at me and threw up his hand like a man
who can do no more. 'Yes,' he said.

"Then I knew, as though he had shouted it out, that Fanie
was dead. I cannot say how, but I knew it.

"'He is dead,' I said. 'Bring him in here.'

"So they went out and carried Fanie in with his clothes all
draggled and his beard full of mud. They laid him on the
table, and I saw his face. . . . Dear God! . . There was
terror on that face, carven and set in dead flesh, that set
my blood screaming in my body. Sometimes even now I wake in
the night all shrinking with fear of the very memory of it.

"But there is one thing more. We went about to put
everything in order and lay the poor corpse in decency, and
when we started to pull off his veldschoen, as I hope to
die in my bed, there was a little drop of blood still wet
on the toe.

"I think God's right hand was on my head that night that I
did not go mad.

"I heard the tale next morning. My brothers, coming home,
found him ... it . . . in a spruit, already quite dead.
There was no horse by, but his spoor led back a mile to
where the horse lay dead and stiff. When it fell he must
have run on, ... screaming, perhaps, . . . till he fell in
the spruit. I would like to think peace came to him at the
last; but there was no peace in the dead face."

The Vrouw Grobelaar dropped her face on to her hands, and
Katje came and passed an arm of sympathy and protection
around her.

THE HANDS OF THE PITIFUL WOMAN

The Vrouw Grobelaar had no opinion of Kafirs, and was
forever ready to justify herself in this particular.

"Kafirs,' she said, 'are not men, whatever the German
missionaries may say. I do not deny we have a duty to them,
as to the beasts of the field; but as for being men, well,
a baboon is as much a man as a Kafir is.

"Kafirs are made to work, and ought to work. Katje, what
are you laughing about? Did not the dear God make
everything for a purpose, and what is the use of a Kafir if
he is not made to work? Work for themselves? Katje, you are
learning nothing but rubbish at th