at
there was reason to believe a time of real prosperity had at length
dawned.

But the settlers were not yet out of the furnace.

Providence saw fit to send other troubles to try them besides unjust and
foolish men in power. There was still another plague in store.

One day Charlie Considine rode towards the farm which had now for
several years been his home.

The young members of the Marais family had grown learned under his care,
and he was now regarded as a son by old Marais and his wife, while the
children looked on him as an elder brother. Charlie had not intended to
stay so long, and sometimes his conscience reproved him for having given
up his profession of medicine, but the longer he stayed with those
sweet-tempered Dutch-African farmers with whom his lot had been cast the
more he liked them, and the more they liked him. What more natural then
that he should stay on from day to day, until he became almost one of
themselves? When people are happy they desire no change.

But it must not be supposed that the youth's office was a sinecure. The
young Marais were numerous, and some of them were stupid,--though
amiable. The trouble caused by these, however, was more than
compensated by the brightness of others, the friendship of Hans, and the
sunshine of Bertha. The last by the way, had now, like Gertrude Brook,
sprung into a woman, and though neither so graceful nor so sprightly as
the pretty English girl, she was pre-eminently sweet and lovable.

Well, one day, as we have said, Charlie Considine rode towards the farm.
He had been out hunting alone, and a springbok tied across the horse
behind him showed that he had been successful.

Rousing himself from a reverie, he suddenly found himself in the midst
of a scene of surpassing beauty. In front lay a quiet pond, whose
surface was so still that it might have been a sheet of clear glass. On
his left the familiar mountain-range beyond the farm appeared bluer and
nearer than usual, owing to the intense heat. To the right the
undulating karroo, covered with wild-flowers, and dotted with clumps of
mimosa-bush, terminated abruptly in a lake which stretched away, in some
places like a sea, to the horizon. Islands innumerable studded the
smooth surface of this lake, and were reflected in its crystal depths.
Not a breath of air riffled its surface, and there was a warm sunny
brightness, a stillness, a deep quietude, about the whole scene which
were powerfull