ping
their brief, cheerful song. As in many Boer houses, the Van Vuurens had
fitted up, for cleanliness' sake, directly under the swallows' nests,
which were fastened between the central roof timber and the reed thatch,
immediately over the table, a broad, square, flat piece of wood. Thus
the swallows never trouble the farmer; and, in return for a kindly
toleration, the pretty, tame creatures do their best to rid the
homesteads of those plagues of flies which are found at most cattle
kraals near a Dutchman's house. Sometimes I have seen the little,
confiding creatures, as old Cornelis sat outside upon the _stoep_, with
legs comfortably outstretched, stoop for an instant upon his shoe, and,
like lightning, pick off some fly that had rested there.

I had long spoken Boer Dutch, and our conversation therefore flowed
smoothly and merrily enough. Old Cornelis was in high spirits, and, in
response to my queries, told several anecdotes of his early life in the
far wilderness. He had been one of the "Voor-Trekkers," quitting the
Cape Colony in 1836, and passing beyond the Orange River to found a new
home, and to seek fresh hunting-grounds beyond the reach of a British
government. His young wife had fared forth with him, and for twenty
years and more had shared his life of pioneer and hunter, with all its
dangers, its roughs and tumbles, its wild pleasures, and its fierce
occasional excitements. In the distant interior, in the big wagon, or
in some temporary hartebeest house of reeds and clay, had the family of
this sturdy pair been reared around them.

Presently, as he filled his great pipe, and pushed his coffee cup away,
some amusing reminiscence flitted across the old Boer's brain. A broad
smile overspread his face, as he said to me, nodding mischievously at
his wife, "_Kerel_ (my boy), you have never by chance heard the story of
the vrouw there and her Frenchman? It used to be pretty well-known in
the veldt years ago."

"No," I answered, "I never heard the tale. What is it?"

"Almighty!" he returned. "It's a good story, though an old one. I
never think of it without laughing, though it happened forty years ago!
I must tell it to him, vrouw; what say you?"

And then, as the merry recollection rose firmer before the old man's
mind, his broad palm smote his great thigh with a smack that resounded
through the room, and he burst into a fit of laughing--so hearty and so
long, that the tears started into his blue