Arriving, I gave the horse to one of the stable boys, and went into the
central hut. There was no sign of Stella, though the things she had
been packing lay about the floor. I passed first into our sleeping hut,
thence one by one into all the others, but still saw no sign of her.
Then I went out, and calling to a Kaffir in the garden asked him if he
had seen his mistress.

He answered "yes." He had seen her carrying flowers and walking towards
the graveyard, holding the little white girl--my daughter--as he called
her, by the hand, when the sun stood "there," and he pointed to a spot
on the horizon where it would have been about an hour and a half before.
"The two dogs were with them," he added. I turned and ran towards the
graveyard, which was about a quarter of a mile from the huts. Of course
there was no reason to be anxious--evidently she had gone to lay the
flowers on her father's grave. And yet I was anxious.

When I got near the graveyard I met one of the natives, who, by my
orders, had been set round the kraals to watch the place, and noticed
that he was rubbing his eyes and yawning. Clearly he had been asleep. I
asked him if he had seen his mistress, and he answered that he had not,
which under the circumstances was not wonderful. Without stopping
to reproach him, I ordered the man to follow me, and went on to the
graveyard. There, on Mr. Carson's grave, lay the drooping flowers which
Stella had been carrying, and there in the fresh mould was the spoor of
Tota's veldschoon, or hide slipper. But where were they?

I ran from the graveyard and called aloud at the top of my voice, but no
answer came. Meanwhile the native was more profitably engaged in tracing
their spoor. He followed it for about a hundred yards till he came to
a clump of mimosa bush that was situated between the stream and the
ancient marble quarries just over the waterfall, and at the mouth of the
ravine. Here he stopped, and I heard him give a startled cry. I rushed
to the spot, passed through the trees, and saw this. The little open
space in the centre of the glade had been the scene of a struggle.
There, in the soft earth, were the marks of three pairs of human
feet--two shod, one naked--Stella's, Tota's, and _Hendrika's_. Nor was
this all. There, close by, lay the fragments of the two dogs--they were
nothing more--and one baboon, not yet quite dead, which had been
bitten in the throat by the dogs. All round was the spoor of numberless
b