, supremely awkward--hands like the sails of a
fishing-smack."

"There, that will do," laughed the girl, giving him a playful tap with
one of the libelled hands, a hand which would have served as a model in
a sculpture of Iseult of Brittany. "You are only _beginning_ to sum up
my imperfections, and I am frightened already. No, really; I feel
hardly inclined for a joke even. I am far, far too happy."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Kwaa-kwak-kwak! Kwaa-kwak-kwak!"

Both started, then laughed. The old koorhaan, first disturbed across
the river bed, was returning, as though some instinct notified him that
the fell destroyer was harmless to-day. Right overhead he came, an easy
twenty-five yards' shot. Instinctively Colvin reached for the gun,
which he had rested against an adjoining bush; but as quickly he
recovered himself.

"We'll grant the old squawker an amnesty to-day," he said with a laugh.
"I don't think I could have missed that shot either."

"Kwaa-kwak-kwak! Kwaa-kwak-kwak!" yelled the bird, as, hovering for a
moment, it dropped down among the thorns on the very spot whence it had
been first roused. Then they talked on, those two, happy in the
happiness which cannot often come in a lifetime--happy in the golden
sunshine and the glowing summer of their lives--happy amid the rejoicing
surroundings of Nature, in their vastness and peace and calm. Yet, away
there to the North--what? The gathering cloud, black as night, sweeping
down, steadily, surely--whirled along on the spreading demon-wings of
war--the cloud which, bursting into lurid thunders, should overwhelm all
with its blasting breath in a vortex of hideous hate and red slaughter,
and woe and destitution. No; for the contemplation of this they had no
mind.

Suddenly Aletta gave a start, uttering a little cry of consternation.

"There's the dinner-bell, and you haven't even off-saddled. How late we
shall be!"

"We shall, rather. But what does it matter? Good Lord, though, how the
last hour has flown?"

Was it a suspicion born of the fact that these two shared a momentous
secret that made them think Stephanus exchanged more than one
significant glance with his wife while they sat at dinner? He began to
talk about his nephew Adrian. The latter never came near them now. He
had changed entirely, and seemed to have run patriotism mad. Moreover,
he had taken to associating with certain Boers of