essie," he broke in, "why do you suppose such things? I can
assure you that, if you appeared in a London drawing-room, you would put
most of the women into the shade. Not that there is much chance of my
frequenting London drawing-rooms again," he added.

"Oh, yes! I may be good-looking; I don't say that I am not; but can't
you understand, I do not want you to marry me just because I am a pretty
woman, as the Kafirs marry their wives? If you marry me at all I want
you to marry me because you care for _me_, the real _me_, not my eyes
and my hair. Oh, I don't know what to answer you! I don't indeed!" and
she began to cry softly.

"Bessie, dear Bessie!" said John, who was pretty well beside himself by
this time, "just tell me honestly--do you care about me? I am not worth
much, I know, but if you do all this goes for nothing," and he took her
hand and drew her towards him, so that she half slipped, half rose from
the sod wall and stood face to face with him, for she was a tall woman,
and they were very nearly of a height.

Twice she raised her beautiful eyes to his to answer and twice her
courage failed her; then at last the truth broke from her almost with a
cry:

"Oh, John, I love you with all my heart!"

And now it will be well to drop a veil over the rest of these
proceedings, for there are some things that should be sacred, even from
the pen of the historian, and the first transport of the love of a good
woman is one of them.

Suffice it to say that they sat there side by side on the sod wall,
and were happy as people ought to be under such circumstances, till the
glory departed from the western sky and the world grew cold and pale,
till the night came down and hid the mountains, and only the stars and
they were left to look out across the dusky distances of the wilderness
of plain.

Meanwhile a very different scene was being enacted up at the house half
a mile away.

Not more than ten minutes after John and his lady-love had departed on
that fateful walk to look at the young trees, Frank Muller's stalwart
form, mounted on his great black horse, was to be seen leisurely
advancing towards the blue-gum avenue. Jantje was lurking about between
the stems of the trees in the peculiar fashion that is characteristic
of the Hottentot, and which doubtless is bred into him after tens of
centuries of tracking animals and hiding from enemies. There he was,
slipping from trunk to trunk, and gazing round him as though