past time and friendship, and more especially of the
providential events connected with a night-long ride which once we took
on duty together among the "schanzes" and across the moon-lit paths of
Secocoeni's mountain.

Believe me, my dear Clarke, Your sincere friend, H. Rider Haggard.

To Lieut.-Colonel Sir Marshal Clarke, R.A., K.C.M.G.

SWALLOW

CHAPTER I

WHY VROUW BOTMAR TELLS HER TALE

It is a strange thing that I, an old Boer _vrouw_, should even think
of beginning to write a book when there are such numbers already in
the world, most of them worthless, and many of the rest a scandal and
offence in the face of the Lord. Notably is this so in the case of those
called novels, which are stiff as mealie-pap with lies that fill the
heads of silly girls with vain imaginings, causing them to neglect their
household duties and to look out of the corners of their eyes at young
men of whom their elders do not approve. In truth, my mother and those
whom I knew in my youth, fifty years ago, when women were good and
worthy and never had a thought beyond their husbands and their children,
would laugh aloud could any whisper in their dead ears that Suzanne
Naude was about to write a book. Well might they laugh indeed, seeing
that to this hour the most that I can do with men and ink is to sign
my own name very large; in this matter alone, not being the equal of my
husband Jan, who, before he became paralysed, had so much learning
that he could read aloud from the Bible, leaving out the names and long
words.

No, no, _I_ am not going to write; it is my great-granddaughter, who is
named Suzanne after me, who writes. And who that had not seen her at the
work could even guess how she does it? I tell you that she has brought
up from Durban a machine about the size of a pumpkin which goes
tap-tap--like a woodpecker, and prints as it taps. Now, my husband Jan
was always very fond of music in his youth, and when first the girl
began to tap upon this strange instrument, he, being almost blind and
not able to see it, thought that she was playing on a spinet such
as stood in my grandfather's house away in the Old Colony. The noise
pleases him and sends him to sleep, reminding him of the days when
he courted me and I used to strum upon that spinet with one finger.
Therefore I am dictating this history that he may have plenty of it, and
that Suzanne may be kept out of mischief.

There, that is my joke. Still there is tru