ost to do with the awe in which his memory is
preserved.

Now, a death so well conceived, so aptly preluded, must, in the
nature of things, crown and complete a life of singular and strong
quality. A murder without a good motive is mere folly; properly
actuated, it is tragedy, and therefore of worth. So with a death one
seldom dies well, in the technical sense, without having lived well,
in the artistic sense; and a man who will furnish forth a good death-
bed scene seldom goes naked of an excellent tradition. I have been at
some pains to discover the story of David Uys; and though some or the
greater part of it may throw no further back than to the vrouws of
the dorp, it seems to me that they have done their part at least as
well as David Uys did his, and this is the tale I gleaned.

When David was a young man the Boers were not yet scattered abroad
all over the veldt, and the farms lay in to the dorps, and men saw
one another every day. There was still trouble with the Kafirs at
times, little risings and occasional murders, with the sacking and
burning of homesteads, and it was well to have the men within a
couple of days' ride of the field-cornet, for purposes of defense and
retaliation. But when David married all this weighed little with him.

"What need of neighbors?" he said to his young wife. "We have more
need of land--good land and much of it. We will trek."

"It shall be as you will, David," answered Christina. "I have no wish
but yours, and neighbors are nothing to me."

There was a pair of them, you see--both Boers of the best, caring
more for a good fire of their own than to see the smoke from
another's chimney soiling the sky. Within a week of their agreement
the wagons were creaking towards the rising sun, and the whips were
saluting the morning. David and Christina fronted a new world
together, and sought virgin soil. For a full month they journeyed
out, and out-spanned at last, on a mellow evening, on their home.

"Could you live here, do you think, Christina?" asked David, smiling,
and she smiled back at him and made no other answer.

There was no need for one, indeed, for no Boer could pass such a
place. It was a rise, a little rand, flowing out from a tall kopje,
grass and bush to its crown, and at its skirts ran a wide spruit of
clear water. The veldt waved like a sea--not nakedly and forlorn, but
dotted with grey mimosa and big green dropsical aloes, that here and
there showed a scarlet plu