is father almost
unmitigatedly. His father was blonde and aggressively Saxon in
appearance. His mother had been Dutch, semi-Dutch, of the colored
Dutch type, as I very well knew. She came from the Western
province, and died when he was but a year old, to be followed
by his father some ten years later, just when he had come
back to South Africa from England. Then I, acting on my own
responsibility, sent him to school in the Eastern Province.
No one seemed to bother, even if they had any inkling of his
mother's parentage; he looked to be so completely his father's
son.

It was in Edgar's schooldays that the Place of Pilgrimage was
inaugurated, and that a big star of hope swam into his ken. I had
told him about Oxford before, but there had then seemed no sort
of path open for him to go up thither. Now, in the midst of his
schooldays, there opened out to him a path that he thought he
might climb. It was then in the next long holiday time that he
took his path, a curious and grateful pilgrim, to the Matopos, to
explore the shrine and to give thanks before it.

He dreamed of being a Rhodes scholar years before it came off
that Rhodes scholarship of his. It came in the fullness of time a
thing of many struggles and prayers, of star-led hopes and paths
steep with uphill climbing.

Then at last it was that I agreed to go with him on his yearly
pilgrimage, in September, the month of his sailing for home. May
used to be a Canterbury month in England, the hawthorn month that
pricked men in their courages and sent them out on the Kentish
road. September had been Edgar's pilgrimage month every year a
spring month in our southern country. The masasa leaves were
taking many tints then in Mashonaland. Speaking generally, the
dominant note of our woodland world was rose-color as we tramped
together to the station. Matabeleland by contrast seemed rather
drab and drouthy, yet she was showing signs of spring. One great
rock stood up very beautiful in a pink lichen garment. It was
hard by the path that led to the last hill-climb, ere you reached
the burial-place. We camped out close beside it, two Mashona boys
who had come to seek their fortunes in Bulawayo, and Edgar and I.

When the morning light came I was up. When the sun rose I had all
but finished my service. There, on his own ground, so to speak,
it seemed easier to pray for the Patron with a sanguine heart,
and to give thanks for him with a clear conscience. Over our
breakfas