y. Its events were as real and as important to himself as the
matters of his own life.

He could not go away without knowing whether that wicked earl relented
and whether the baron married Emilina. So he adjusted his spectacles and
began to read. Occasionally, as his feelings became too strongly moved,
he ejaculated: "Ah, I thought so! That was a rogue! I saw it before! I
knew it from the beginning!" More than half an hour had passed when he
looked up to the silver watch at the top of his bed.

"The march is long tomorrow; this will not do," he said, taking off his
spectacles and putting them carefully into the book to mark the place.
"This will be good reading as I walk along tomorrow," he added, as he
stuffed the book into the pocket of the greatcoat; "very good reading."
He nodded his head and lay down. He thought a little of his own
troubles, a good deal of the two little girls he was leaving, of the
earl, of Emilina, of the baron; but he was soon asleep--sleeping as
peacefully as a little child, upon whose innocent soul sorrow and care
cannot rest.

It was very quiet in the room. The coals in the fireplace threw a dull
red light across the floor upon the red lions on the quilt. Eleven
o'clock came, and the room was very still.

One o'clock came. The glimmer had died out, though the ashes were still
warm, and the room was very dark. The grey mouse, who had his hole under
the toolbox, came out and sat on the sacks in the corner; then, growing
bolder, the room was so dark, it climbed the chair at the bedside,
nibbled at the roaster-cake, took one bite quickly at the candle, and
then sat on his haunches listening. It heard the even breathing of the
old man, and the steps of the hungry Kaffer dog going his last round
in search of a bone or a skin that had been forgotten; and it heard the
white hen call out as the wild cat ran away with one of her brood, and
it heard the chicken cry. Then the grey mouse went back to its hole
under the toolbox, and the room was quiet. And two o'clock came. By that
time the night was grown dull and cloudy. The wild cat had gone to its
home on the kopje; the Kaffer dog had found a bone, and lay gnawing it.

An intense quiet reigned everywhere. Only in her room the Boer-woman
tossed her great arms in her sleep; for she dreamed that a dark shadow
with outstretched wings fled slowly over her house, and she moaned and
shivered. And the night was very still.

But, quiet as all places were,