er lids again, and her lips a-quiver. But he
held her against his heart close, close--crushing the yellow roses,
kissing the little stones from her lids and the quiver from her lips.
Then he left her swiftly; for it is a sweet and terrible thing to kiss
the lips and crush the roses and go, and a better thing to hasten the
hour when one may kiss the lips and crush the roses--and stay.

So she did not see him again for three days. But from the faithful
McNeil she heard that the flooded river had been forded and a telegram
sent recalling Bernard van Cannan, that a search had been instituted
for the mistress of Blue Aloes, who was missing, that a party of
farmers had been collected to "sit" upon the body of Richard Saxby, and
had pronounced him most regrettably dead from the bite of a black
mamba. Whereafter he was buried in a quiet spot near the hedge of blue
aloes, from which he had collected so many rare specimens of poisonous
reptiles and insects.

On the third day, one of the kloofs on the farm gave up a wig of golden
hair, all muddy and weed-entangled. The natives hung it on a bush to
dry, and there was much gossip among them that day, hastily hushed when
any European person came by.

At nine o'clock the same evening, Roddy was found peacefully sleeping
in the bed with Meekie carefully adjusting the mosquito-curtains over
him as though he had never been missing. In the morning, he told
Christine he had had an awfully funny dream.

"I dreamed I was with my old 'nannie' again--you know--Sophy. She was
all covered up, and I could only see her eyes looking through holes in
a white thing. She was living all by herself in a hut. I didn't stay
with her, but with another old woman, but she used to come and see me
every day, and sometimes Meekie used to come, too, and Klaas and Jacoop
and all the farm-boys to talk to me. The old woman kept giving me some
tea made of herbs that made me feel very quiet and happy, and Sophy
told me I should come back soon to the farm when daddy was home again.
She was always covered up with white clothes, and I could only see her
eyes, and I love Sophy very much, Miss Chaine, but I can't say she
smelled very nice in my dream. It was a very funny dream, though, and
lasted an awful long time."

It had indeed lasted three days, but Roddy would never know that,
during those three days, he had been incarcerated in the Kafir kraal on
the hillside, outside the aloe hedge. It was only whe