eight has its advantages and its inconveniences.
Doubtless it was given to me for some good end, just as a pretty little
face and figure were given to you."

"You are very impudent, Mr Hans."

"Am I? Then I must ask your pardon. But tell me, Gertie, what do you
think of the new life that is before you?"

"How stupid you are, Hans! If the new life were behind me I might be
able to answer, but how can I tell how I shall like what I don't know
anything about?"

"Nay, but you know something of the beginning of it," returned the young
Dutchman, with an amused smile, "and you have heard much of what is yet
to come. What do you think of the _prospect_ before you?"

"Think of the prospect?" repeated Gertie, knitting her brows and looking
down with a pretended air of profound thought; "let me see: the prospect
as I've heard father say to mother,--which was just a repetition of what
I had heard him previously say to these queer brothers Skyd--is a life
in the bush--by which I suppose he means the bushes--in which we shall
have to cut down the trees, plough up the new soil, build our cottages,
rear our sheep and cattle, milk our cows, make our butter, grow our
food, and sometimes hunt it, fashion our clothing, and protect our
homes. Is that right?"

"Well, that's just about it," was the answer; "how do you like that
prospect?"

"I delight in it," cried the girl, with a flash in her brilliant black
eyes, while she half laughed at her own sudden burst of enthusiasm.
"Only fancy! mother milking the cows, and me making butter, and Scholtz
ploughing, and Dally planting, and nurse tending Junkie and making all
sorts of garments, while father goes out with his gun to shoot food and
protect us from the Kafirs."

"'Tis a pleasant picture," returned Hans, with a bland smile, "and I
hope may be soon realised--I must bid you goodbye now, Gertie, we
separate here."

"Do you go far away?" asked the girl, with a touch of sadness, as she
put her little hand into that of the young giant.

"A goodish bit. Some six or eight days' journey from here,--according
to the weather."

"You'll come and see us some day, won't you, Hans?"

"Ja--I will," replied Hans, with emphasis.

The whips cracked again, the oxen strained, the lumbering waggons
groaned as they moved away, and while the Scotch band passed over the
Zuurbergen range and headed in the direction of the Winterberg
mountains, their English friends spread themselves over the