. He looked
surprised on reading the first line or two; then a dark frown settled on
his face, which, as he read on, became pale, while his compressed lips
twitched with suppressed passion.

Finishing the paragraph, he crushed the newspaper up in his hand, and,
thrusting it into his pocket, hastened to the stable, where he saddled
his horse. Leaping on its back as if he had been a youth of twenty, he
drove the spur into its flanks and galloped away at full speed--away
over the dusty road leading from Somerset to the hills: away over the
ridge that separates it from the level country beyond; and away over the
brown karroo, until at last, covered with dust and flecked with foam, he
drew up at his own door and burst in upon the family. They were
concluding their evening meal.

"Read that!" he cried, flinging down the paper, throwing himself into a
chair, and bringing his fist down on the table with a crash that set
cups and glasses dancing.

"There!" he added, pointing to the paragraph, as Hans took up the
paper--"that despatch from Lord Glenelg--the British Colonial
Secretary--at the top of the column. Read it aloud, boy."

Hans read as follows:--

"`In the conduct which was pursued towards the Kafir nation by the
colonists and the public authorities of the colony, through a long
series of years, the Kafirs had ample justification of the late war;
they had to resent, and endeavour justly, though impotently, to avenge a
series of encroachments; they had a perfect right to hazard the
experiment, however hopeless, of extorting by force that redress which
they could not expect otherwise to obtain, and the claim of sovereignty
over the new province must be renounced. It rests upon a conquest
resulting from a war in which, as far as I am at present enabled to
judge, the original justice is on the side of the conquered, not of the
victorious party.'"

"Mark that!" cried Conrad, starting to his feet when Hans had finished,
and speaking loud, as if he were addressing the assembled colony instead
of the amazed members of his own family,--"mark that: `_the claim of
sovereignty over the new province must be renounced_.' So it seems that
the Kafirs are not only to be patted on the back for having acted the
part of cattle-lifters for years, but are to be invited back to their
old haunts to begin the work over again and necessitate another war."

He stopped abruptly, as if to check words that ought not to be uttered.
Ther