aas Frank thinking of, I wonder?" said Jantje to himself as
horse and man passed within four feet of him. Then rising, he crossed
the road, and slipping round by a back way like a fox from a covert,
was standing at the stable-door with a vacant and utterly unobservant
expression of face some seconds before the black horse and its rider had
reached the house.

"I will give them one more chance, just one more," thought the handsome
Boer, or rather half-breed--for it will be remembered that his mother
was English--"and if they won't take it, then let their fate be upon
their own heads. To-morrow I go to the _bymakaar_ at Paarde Kraal to
take counsel with Paul Kruger and Pretorius, and the other 'fathers
of the land,' as they call themselves. If I throw in my weight against
rebellion there will be no rebellion; if I urge it there will be, and
if _Oom_ Silas will not give me Bessie, and Bessie will not marry me, I
will urge it even if it plunge the whole country in war from the Cape to
Waterberg. Patriotism! Independence! Taxes!--that is what they will cry
till they begin to believe it themselves. Bah! those are not the things
that I would go to war for; but ambition and revenge, ah! that is
another matter. I would kill them all if they stood in my way, all
except Bessie. If war breaks out, who will hold up a hand to help the
'_verdomde Englesmann_'? They would all be afraid. And it is not my
fault. Can I help if it I love that woman? Can I help it if my blood
dries up with longing for her, and if I lie awake hour by hour of
nights, ay, and weep--I, Frank Muller, who saw the murdered bodies of my
father and my mother and shed no tear--because she hates me and will not
look favourably upon me?

"Oh, woman! woman! They talk of ambition and of avarice and of
self-preservation as the keys of character and action, but what force is
there to move us like a woman? A little thing, a weak fragile thing--a
toy from which the rain will wash the paint and of which the rust will
stop the working, and yet a thing that can shake the world and pour out
blood like water, and bring down sorrow like the rain. So! I stand by
the boulder. A touch and it will go crashing down the mountain-side
so that the world hears it. Shall I send it? It is all one to me. Let
Bessie and _Oom_ Silas judge. I would slaughter every Englishman in
the Transvaal to gain Bessie--ay! and every Boer too, and throw all the
natives in;" and he laughed aloud, and struck