, and two or three
fever-stricken sheep--this is what Colvin saw as he rode up to his
destination. The while, the air was thick with an awful combination of
adjacent dead goat and a partly decomposed oxhide, in process of
preparation for the making of reims.

Even as he had expected, Gideon Roux was not at home. His wife, a
large, fat, and albeit quite young, already shapeless person, untidy and
slatternly of attire, came forward and tendered a moist paw, with the
simple salutation "_Daag_!" or "good-day"--an example followed by her
sister, who was a replica of herself though a trifle more shapely and
less slovenly but not less awkward. Several brats, in varying stages of
dirt, hung around, finger in mouth, gaping at the new arrival. There
were some strange Boers there too, with whom Colvin exchanged greetings;
but their manner was awkward and constrained. It was a relief to him
when his hostess declared that dinner was ready.

It was an appalling meal to the civilised palate and digestion that to
which they now sat down. There was a stew, fearfully and wonderfully
made, of leathery goat, sweetened to a nauseating point with quince jam,
and, for vegetable, boiled pumpkin, containing almost as much water as
pumpkin. The cloth was excessively grimy, and, worse still, bore many
an ancient stain which showed that the day of its last washing must have
been lost in the mists of antiquity, and there was no salt. The coffee,
moreover, tasted like a decoction of split peas, and was plentifully
interwoven with hair, and straw as from the thatch. The women did not
sit down to table with them, but handed in the dishes from the kitchen,
and then sat and waited until the men had done.

Through all her natural stolidity it struck Colvin that both the
countenance and manner of his hostess wore a flurried, not to say
scared, look. She seemed to try and avoid conversation with him; and it
squared with the fact of Gideon Roux being from home. Could any
information be got out of her? To this end he began to question her in
an artless conversational way.

"Gideon will be in directly, Juffrouw?"

"_Nee_, Mynheer Kershaw. He will not be in. He left home yesterday
morning and I do not expect him back until to-morrow night."

"_So_? That is strange. Why, I thought I saw him just now, the other
side of the _poort_--just half an hour's ride from here. He was coming
in this direction too."

"_Nee, nee_--that cannot be." A