d and turn on them. Any one
may hear them in the kloofs on a windless night, and, I can
tell you, the sound of their sorrow is pitiful."

Katje threw out a suggestion to console them with buckshot,
and the Vrouw Grobelaar nodded with meaning.

"To hate baboons is well enough in the wife of a Burgher,"
she said sweetly. "I am glad to see there is so much
fitness and wifeliness about you, since you will naturally
spend all your life on farms."

Katje's flush was a distress signal. First blood to the
Vrouw.

"Baboons," continued the old lady, "are among a farmer's
worst enemies. They steal and destroy and menace all the
year round, but for all that there are many farmers who
will not shoot or trap them. And these, you will notice,
are always farmers of a ripe age and sense shaped by
experience. They know, you may be sure. My stepsister's
first husband, Shadrach van Guelder, shot at baboons once,
and was so frightened afterwards that he was afraid to be
alone in the dark."

There was a story toward, and no one moved.

"There were many Kafirs on his farm, which you have not
seen," pursued the Vrouw Grobelaar, adjusting her voice to
narrative pitch. "It was on the fringe of the Drakensberg,
and many spurs of hill, divided by deep kloofs like gashes,
descended on to it. So plenty of water came down, and the
cattle were held from straying by the rocks, on one side at
any rate. The Kafirs had their kraals dotted all about the
land; and as they were of the kind that works, my
stepsister's husband suffered them to remain and grow their
little patches of mealies, while they worked for him in
between. He was, of course, a cattle Boer, as all of our
family have always been, but here were so many Kafirs to be
had for nothing, that he soon commenced to plough great
spaces of land and sow valuable crops. There was every
prospect that he would make very much money out of that
farm; for corn always sells, even when cattle are going for
only seven pounds apiece, and Shadrach van Guelder was very
cheerful about it.

"But when a farmer weighs an ungrown crop, you will always
find that there is something or other he does not take into
account. He tells of the weather and the land and the
Kafirs and the water on his fingers, and forgets to bend
down his thumb to represent God--or something. Shadrach van
Guelder lifted up his eyes to the hills from whence came
the water, but it was not until the green corn was six
inches high th