t nobleman himself confessed his
error with a candour that said much for his heart; reversed his own
decrees, and fell back upon that very plan which at first he had
condemned in such ungenerous terms. His recantation could not, however,
recall the thousands of Dutch-African farmers whom he helped to
expatriate. Perhaps it was well that it should be so, for good came out
of this evil,--namely, the reclamation of vast tracts of the most
beautiful and fertile regions of the earth from the dominion of darkness
and cruelty.

But what of those whose fortunes we have been following, during this
period of peace and prosperity?

Some of them remained in the colony, helped on these blessings, and
enjoyed them. Others, casting in their lot with the wanderers, fought
the battles and helped to lay the foundations of the new colonies.

First, Charlie Considine. That fortunate man--having come into the
possession of a considerable sum of money, through the uncle who had
turned out so much "better than he should be," and having become
possessed of a huge family of sons and daughters through that Gertie
whom he styled the "sugar of his existence,"--settled in Natal along
with his friends Hans and Conrad Marais. When that fertile and warm
region was taken possession of by the British, he refused to hive off
with the Marais, and continued to labour there in the interests of
truth, mercy, and justice to the end of his days.

Junkie Brook, with that vigour of character which had asserted itself on
the squally day of his nativity, joined Frank Dobson and John Skyd in a
hunting expedition beyond the Great Orange River; and when the Orange
Free State was set up by the emigrant Dutchmen, he and his friends
established there a branch of the flourishing house of Dobson, Skyd, and
Company. Being on the spot when South Africa was electrified by the
discovery (in 1866-67) of the Diamond Fields of that region, they sent
their sons, whose name was legion, to dig, and soon became diamond
merchants of the first water, so that when Junkie visited his aged
parents on the Zuurveld--which he often did--he usually appeared with
his pockets full of precious stones!

"I've found a diamond _this_ time, nurse," he said, on the occasion of
one of these visits, "which is as big--oh!--as--as an ostrich-egg! See,
here it is," and he laid on the table a diamond which, if not quite as
big as the egg of the giant bird, was large enough to enable him, with