ng Vrouw Grobelaar.

She bounced from her chair and ballooned to the door with a
silent swift agility most surprising to see in a lady of
her generous build, and not a sound did she utter. She was
of good veld-bred fighting stock, which never cried out
till it was hurt, and there was even something of
compassion in her face as Frikkie jumped from the stoop
with a twelve-foot thong in his hand. It was, after all,
the baboon that suffered most, if his yells were any index
to his feelings. Frikkie could smudge a fly ten feet off
with just a flick of his whip, and all the tender parts of
the accomplished animal came in for ruthless attention.

"He ought to be shot," was Frikkie's remark as he curled up
the thong at the end of the discipline. "A baboon is past
teaching if he has bad habits. He is more like a man than a
beast."

The Vrouw Grobelaar seated herself in the stoop chair which
by common consent was reserved for her use, and shook her
head.

"Baboons are uncanny things," she answered slowly. "When
you shoot them, you can never be quite sure how much murder
there is in it. The old story is that some of them have
souls and some not: and it is quite certain that they can
talk when they will. You have heard them crying in the
night sometimes. Well, you ask a Kafir what that means. Ask
an old wise Kafir, not a young one that has forgotten the
wisdom of the black people and learned the foolishness only
of the white."

"What does it mean, tante?" It was I that put the question.
Katje, too, seemed curious.

The old lady eyed me gloomily.

"If you were a landed Boer, instead of a kind of
schoolmaster," she replied, witheringly, "you would not
need to ask such a question. But I will tell you. A baboon
may be wicked--look at that one showing his teeth and
cursing--but he is not blind nor a fool. He runs about on
the hills, and steals and fights and scratches, and all the
time he has all the knowledge and twice the strength of a
man, if it were not for the tail behind him and the hair on
his body. So it is natural that sometimes he should be
grieved to be such a mean thing as a baboon when he could
be a useful kind of man if the men would let him. And at
nights, particularly, when their troop is in laager and the
young ones are on watch among the high rocks, it comes home
to the best of them, and they sob and weep like young
widows, pretending that they have pains inside so that the
others shall not feel offende