search for the lost sheep. He rode slowly, for he had
been in the saddle since sunrise and was somewhat weary, and the heat
of the afternoon made his horse sleepy as it picked its way slowly along
the sandy road. Every now and then a great red spider would start out
of the karoo on one side of the path and run across to the other, but
nothing else broke the still monotony. Presently, behind one of the
highest of the milk-bushes that dotted the roadside, the German caught
sight of a Kaffer woman, seated there evidently for such shadow as the
milk-bush might afford from the sloping rays of the sun.

The German turned the horse's head out of the road. It was not his way
to pass a living creature without a word of greeting. Coming nearer, he
found it was no other than the wife of the absconding Kaffer herd. She
had a baby tied on her back by a dirty strip of red blanket; another
strip hardly larger was twisted round her waist, for the rest her black
body was naked. She was a sullen, ill-looking woman with lips hideously
protruding.

The German questioned her as to how she came there. She muttered in
broken Dutch that she had been turned away. Had she done evil? She shook
her head sullenly. Had she had food given her? She grunted a negative,
and fanned the flies from her baby. Telling the woman to remain where
she was, he turned his horse's head to the road and rode off at a
furious pace.

"Hard-hearted! cruel! Oh, my God! Is this the way? Is this charity?"

"Yes, yes, yes," ejaculated the old man as he rode on; but, presently,
his anger began to evaporate, his horse's pace slackened, and by the
time he had reached his own door he was nodding and smiling.

Dismounting quickly, he went to the great chest where his provisions
were kept. Here he got out a little meal, a little mealies, a few
roaster-cakes. These he tied up in three blue handkerchiefs, and putting
them into a sailcloth bag, he strung them over his shoulders. Then he
looked circumspectly out at the door. It was very bad to be discovered
in the act of giving; it made him red up to the roots of his old
grizzled hair. No one was about, however, so he rode off again. Beside
the milk-bush sat the Kaffer woman still--like Hagar, he thought, thrust
out by her mistress in the wilderness to die. Telling her to loosen the
handkerchief from her head, he poured into it the contents of his bag.
The woman tied it up in sullen silence.

"You must try and get to the next f