e's Trek was an evergreen favorite, and
bore a weighty moral.

The old lady began this story in the only possible way.
"Once upon a time, long before the Boers came to the
Transvaal, there lived a man named Piet Naude. He was a
tall, strong Burgher, with a long beard that swept down to
his waist, and a moustache like bright gold that drooped
lower than his chin. His eye was so clear that he could see
the legs of a galloping buck a mile away; his hand was so
sure that he never wasted a bullet; and his heart was so
good and true that all the Burghers loved him and followed
him in whatever he did.

"Well, when the English came to the Burghers and wanted
them to pay taxes for their farms that they had won in
battle from the Kafirs, all the men in Piet Naude's country
were very angry and said, 'Let us take our guns and shoot
the English into the sea, so that the land will be clear of
them.' Everybody was willing, and but for Piet Naude there
would have been a great and bloody war, and all the English
would have been killed.

"But Piet Naude said, 'Brothers, have patience. When we
fought the Kafirs we beat them, but many of us were killed
also. If we fight the English, many more will be killed,
and we are not too many now. But I will tell you what we
will do. We will not pay this tax. We will inspan our oxen
and load up our wagons, and we will take our sheep and our
cattle and our horses, and trek to the north until we find
a place where we can live in peace; and thus we shall have
a country of our own and pay no taxes to anybody.'

"As soon as the Burghers heard this they were agreed, and
chose out Piet Naude to lead them to the new country. So
when the English came to collect the tax they found nobody
to pay, but only an empty country, with trampled cornlands
and burned homesteads, and wild Kafirs living in the
kraals.

"But Piet Naude and his Burghers trekked steadily on with
the wagons and the cattle,--sometimes through a fine level
country full of water and game, and sometimes through a
savage wilderness of rocks and dangerous beasts. The sun
scorched them by day and the mists froze them by night;
some died by the way, and some were killed by lions, and
some bitten by snakes. But month after month they held on,
crawling slowly over the desolate face of that great new
country, till at length the ragged weary men cried out and
said they would go no farther.

"'Let us go back to the grass-lands and water,' the