nce I left?" said
the German, turning to the Hottentot woman, who sat upon the step.

She was his friend; she would tell him kindly the truth. The woman
answered by a loud, ringing laugh.

"Give it him, old missis! Give it him!"

It was so nice to see the white man who had been master hunted down. The
coloured woman laughed, and threw a dozen mealie grains into her mouth
to chew.

All anger and excitement faded from the old man's face. He turned slowly
away and walked down the little path to his cabin, with his shoulders
bent; it was all dark before him. He stumbled over the threshold of his
own well-known door.

Em, sobbing bitterly, would have followed him; but the Boer-woman
prevented her by a flood of speech which convulsed the Hottentot, so low
were its images.

"Come, Em," said Lyndall, lifting her small proud head, "let us go in.
We will not stay to hear such language."

She looked into the Boer-woman's eyes. Tant Sannie understood the
meaning of the look if not the words. She waddled after them, and caught
Em by the arm. She had struck Lyndall once years before, and had never
done it again, so she took Em.

"So you will defy me, too, will you, you Englishman's ugliness!" she
cried, and with one hand she forced the child down, and held her head
tightly against her knee; with the other she beat her first upon one
cheek, and then upon the other.

For one instant Lyndall looked on, then she laid her small fingers on
the Boer-woman's arm. With the exertion of half its strength Tant Sannie
might have flung the girl back upon the stones. It was not the power
of the slight fingers, tightly though they clinched her broad wrist--so
tightly that at bedtime the marks were still there; but the Boer-woman
looked into the clear eyes and at the quivering white lips, and with a
half-surprised curse relaxed her hold. The girl drew Em's arm through
her own.

"Move!" she said to Bonaparte, who stood in the door, and he, Bonaparte
the invincible, in the hour of his triumph, moved to give her place.

The Hottentot ceased to laugh, and an uncomfortable silence fell on all
the three in the doorway.

Once in their room, Em sat down on the floor and wailed bitterly.
Lyndall lay on the bed with her arm drawn across her eyes, very white
and still.

"Hoo, hoo!" cried Em; "and they won't let him take the grey mare; and
Waldo has gone to the mill. Hoo, hoo, and perhaps they won't let us go
and say good-bye to him. Hoo, hoo,