Kitabı oku: «The Outspan: Tales of South Africa», sayfa 8

Chapter Five.
The Pool

Everyone remembers the rush to De Kaap some years ago. How everyone said that everyone else would make fortunes in half no time, and the country would be saved! Well, my brother Jim and I thought we would like to make fortunes too; so we packed our boxes, donned flannel shirts, felt hats and moleskin trousers, with a revolver each carelessly slung at our sides, and started. We intended to dig for about a year or so, and then sell out and live on the interest of our money – 30,000 pounds each would do. It was all cut and dried. I often almost wished it wasn’t so certain, as now one hadn’t a chance of coming back suddenly and surprising the loved ones at home with the news of a grand fortune.

Full of excitement (certainties notwithstanding) we went down to Kent’s Forwarding Store, and there met Mr Harding, whose waggons were loaded for the gold-fields. This was our chance, and we took it.

On November 10, 1883, we crossed Little Sunday’s River and outspanned at the foot of Knight’s Cutting. The day was close and sultry, and Harding thought it best to lie by until the cool of the evening before attempting the hill. It wasn’t much of a cool evening we got after all; except that we had not the scorching rays of the sun beating down upon us, it was no cooler at 10 p.m. than at mid-day. We were outspanned above the cutting, and the oppressive heat of the day and the sultriness of the evening seemed to have told on our party, and we were all squatted about on the long soft grass, smoking or thinking. Besides my brother and myself there were two young Scotchmen (just out from home) and a little Frenchman. He was a general favourite on account of his inexhaustible good-nature and unflagging high spirits.

We were, as I have said, stretched out on the grass smoking in silence, watching the puffs and rings of smoke melt quietly away, so still was the air. How long we had lain thus I don’t know, but I was the first to break the silence by exclaiming:

“What a grand night for a bathe!”

There was no reply to this for some seconds, and then Jim gave an apathetic grunt in courteous recognition of the fact that I had spoken. I subsided again, and there was another long silence – evidently no one wanted to talk; but I had become restless and fidgety under the heat and stillness, and presently I returned to the charge.

“Who’s for a bathe?” I asked.

Someone grunted out something about “no place.”

“Oh yes, there is,” said I, glad of even so much encouragement; and then, turning to Harding, I said:

“I hear the water in the kloof. There is a place, isn’t there?”

“Yes,” he answered slowly, “there is one place, but you wouldn’t care to dip there… It’s the Murderer’s Pool.”

“The what?” we asked in a breath.

“The Murderer’s Pool,” he repeated with such slow seriousness that we at once became interested – the name sent an odd tingle through one. I was already all attention, and during the pause that followed the others closed around and settled themselves to hear the yarn. When he had tantalised us enough with his provoking slowness, Harding began:

“About this time last year – By-the-by, what is the date?” he asked, breaking off.

“The tenth!” exclaimed two or three together.

“By Jove! it’s the very day. Yes, that’s queer. This very day last year I was outspanned on this spot, as we are now. I had a lady and gentleman with me as passengers that trip. They were pleasant, accommodating people, and gave us no trouble at all; they used to spend all their time botanising and sketching. On this afternoon Mrs Allan went down to the ravine below to sketch some peculiar bit of rock scenery. I think all ladies sketch when they travel, some more and some less. But Mrs Allan could sketch and paint really well, and often went off alone short distances while her husband stayed to chat with me. She had been gone about twenty minutes when we were startled by a most awful piercing shriek – another, another, and another – and then all was still again. Before the first had died away Allan and I were running at full speed towards where we judged the shrieks to have come from. Fortunately we were right. Down there, a bit to the right, we came upon a fair-sized pool, on the surface of which Mrs Allan was still floating. In a few seconds we had her out and were trying restoratives; and on detecting signs of returning life we carried her up to the waggons. When she became conscious she started up with oh! such a look of horror and fright. I’ll never forget it! Seeing her husband, however, and holding his hand, she became calm again, and told us all about it.

“It seems she had been sitting by the side of the stream sketching the pool and the great perpendicular cliff rising out of it. The sunlight was playing on the water, silvering every ripple, and bringing out every detail of the rocks and foliage above. Feathery mosses festooned from cliff to cliff; maidenhair ferns clustered in every nook and crevice; the drops on every leaf and tendril glistened in the setting sun like a thousand diamonds. That’s what she told us.

“She sat a few minutes before beginning, watching the varying shades and hues, when, glancing idly into the water, she saw deep, deep down, a sight that horrified her.

“On the rocks at the bottom of the pool lay the body of a gigantic Kaffir, his throat cut from ear to ear, and the white teeth gleaming and grinning at her.

“Instinctively she screamed and ran, and in trying to pass along the narrow ledge she slipped and fell into the water. Had her clothes not buoyed her up she would have been drowned, as when the cold water closed round her it seemed like the clasp of death, and she lost consciousness.”

“Well, what about the nigger?” I asked, for Harding had stopped with the air of one whose tale was told.

“Oh, he was dead right enough – throat cut and assegai through the heart. A fight, I expect.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“Raked him out and planted him up here somewhere. Let’s see – yes, that’s the place,” – indicating the pile of stones my brother was sitting on.

Jim got up hurriedly; perhaps, as he said, he wanted to look at the place. Yet there was a general laugh at him.

“Did you think he had you, Jim?” I asked innocently.

“Don’t you gas, old chap! How about that bathe you were so bent on?”

Merciful heavens! The words fell like a bucket of ice-water on me. I made a ghastly attempt at a laugh, but it was a failure – an utter failure – and of course brought all the others down on me at once.

“The nigger seems to have taken all the bathe out of you, old man,” said one.

“Not at all!” I answered loftily. “It would take more than that to frighten me.”

Now, why on earth didn’t I hold my tongue and let the remark pass? I must needs make an ass of myself by bravado, and now I was in for it. There was a perfect chorus of, “Go it, old man!” “Now, isn’t that real pluck?” “Six to four on the nigger!”

“I pet fife pound you not swim agross and dife two times.” This last came from the little French demon, and, being applauded by the company, I took up the bet. The fact is I was nettled by the chaff, and in the heat of the moment did what I regretted a minute later.

As I rose to get my towel I said with cutting sarcasm:

“I don’t care about the bet, but I’ll just show you that everyone isn’t afraid of his own shadow; though,” I added forgetfully, “it’s rather an unreasonable time to bathe.”

Here Frenchy struck a stage attitude, and said innocently:

“Ah! vat a night foor ze bade!”

The shout of laughter that greeted this sally was more than enough to decide me, and I went off in search of a towel.

Harding, I could see, did not like the idea, and tried to persuade me to give it up; but that was out of the question.

“Mind,” said he, “I’m no believer in ghosts; yet,” he added, with rather a forced laugh, “this is the anniversary, and you know it’s uncanny.”

I quite agreed with him, but dared not say so, and I pretended to laugh it off. I was ready in a few moments, and then a rather happy idea, as I thought, struck me, and I called out:

“Who’s coming to see that I win my bet?”

“Oh, we know we can trust you, old chap!” said Jim with exaggerated politeness. “It’d be a pity, you know, to outnumber the ghost.”

“Very well; it’s all the same to me. Good-bye! Two dives and a swim across – is that it?”

“Yes, and look out for the nigger!”

“Mind you fish him up!”

“Watch his teeth, Jack!”

“Feel for his throat, you know!” This latter exclamation came from Jim; it was yelled out as I disappeared down the slope. Jim had not forgotten the incident of the grave, evidently.

I had a half-moon to go by, and a ghostly sort of light it shed. Everything seemed more shadowy and fantastic than usual. Besides this, I had not gone a hundred yards from the waggons before every sound was stilled; not the faintest whisper stirred the air. The crunching of my heavy boots on the gravel was echoed across the creek, and every step grated on my nerves and went like a sword-stab through me.

However, I walked along briskly until the descent became more steep and I was obliged to go more carefully. Down I went, step by step, lower and lower, till I felt the light grow dimmer and dimmer, and then quite suddenly I stepped into gloom and darkness.

This startled me. The suddenness of the change made me shiver a bit and fancy it was cold; but it couldn’t have been that, for a moment later the chill had gone and the air was close and sultry. It must have been something else. Still I went down, down, down, along the winding path, and the further I went the more intense seemed the stillness and the deeper the gloom.

Once I stood still to listen; there was not a stir or sound save the trickling of the water below. My heart began to beat rather fast, and my breath seemed heavy. What was it? Surely, I thought, it is not fright? I tried to whistle now as I strode along, but the death-like silence mocked me and choked the breath in my throat.

At last I reached the stream. The path ran along the side of the water among the rocks and ferns. I looked for the pool, but could not see a sign of it. Still I followed the path until it wound along a very narrow ledge of rock.

I was so engrossed picking my steps along there that, when I had got round and saw the pool lying black and silent at my feet, I fairly staggered back with the shock. There was no mistaking the place. The pool was surrounded by high rocks; on the opposite side they ran up quite perpendicularly to a good height. Nowhere, except the ledge at my feet, would a man have been able to get out of the water alone. The black surface of the water was as smooth as glass; not a ripple or bubble or straw broke its awful monotony.

It fascinated me; but it was a ghostly spot. I don’t know how long I stood there watching it. It seemed hours. A sickening feeling had crept over me, and I knew I was afraid.

I looked all round, but there was nothing to break the horrid spell. Behind me there was a face of rock twenty feet high with ferns and creepers falling from every crevice. But it looked black, too. I turned silently again towards the water, almost hoping to see something there; but there was still the same unbroken surface, the same oppressive deadly silence as before. What was the use of delaying? It had to be done; so I might as well face it at once. I own I was frightened. I would have lost the bet with pleasure, but to stand the laughter, chaff, and jeers of the others! No! that I could never do. My mind was made up to it, so I threw off my clothes quickly and came up to the water’s edge. I walked out on the one low ledge and looked down. I was trembling then, I know.

I tried to think it was cold, but I knew it was not that I stooped low down to search the very depths of the pool, but I could see nothing; all was uniformly dark. And yet – good God! what was that? Right down at the bottom lay a long black object. With starting eyes I looked again. It was only a rock. I drew back a pace and sat down. The perspiration was in beads on my forehead. I shook in every limb; sick and faint, my breath went and came in the merest whispers. So I sat for a minute or two with my head resting on my hands, and then the thought struck me, “What if the others are watching me above?”

I jumped up to make a running plunge of it, but, somehow, the run slackened into a walk, and the walk ended in a pause near the ledge, and there I stood to have another look into the dark, still pool.

Suddenly there was a rustling behind me. I jumped round, tingling, quivering all over, and a pebble rolled at my feet from the rocks above. I called out in a shaky voice, “Now then, you chaps! none of that; I can see you.” But really I could see nothing, and the echo of my voice had such a weird, awful sound that I began to lose my head altogether. There was no use now pretending that I was not frightened, for I was. My nerves were completely unstrung, my head was splitting, and my legs could hardly bear me. I preferred to face any ridicule rather than endure this for another minute, and I commenced dressing. Then I pictured to myself Jim’s grinning face, Frenchy’s pantomime of the whole affair, Harding’s quiet smile, and the chaff and laughter of them all, and I paused. A sudden rush, a plunge and souse, and I was in. Breathless and gasping I struck out, only twenty yards across; madly I swam. The cold water made my flesh creep. On and on, faster and faster; would I never reach it? At last I touched the rocks and turned to come back. Then all their chaff recurred to me. Every stroke seemed to hiss the words at me, “Feel for his throat! Feel for his throat!” I fancied the dead nigger was on me, and every moment expected to feel his hand on my shoulder. On I sped, faster and faster, mad with the dread of being entangled by the legs and pulled down – I swam for life. When I scrambled on the ledge I felt I was saved! Then all at once I began to feel my body tingling with a most exhilarating sense of relief after an absurd fright, a sense of power restored, of self-respect and triumph and an insane desire to laugh. I did laugh, but the sepulchral echoes of my hilarious cackle rather chilled me, and I began to dress.

Then for the first time occurred to me the conditions of the bet: “Two dives and a swim across.” Now, this would have been quite natural in ordinary pools – a plunge, a scramble on the opposite bank, another plunge, and back. But here, with the precipitous face of rock opposite, it meant two swims across and two dives from the same spot. But I did not mind; in fact, I was enjoying it now, and I thought with a glow of pride how I would rub it into Jim about fishing up his darned old nigger with the cut throat.

I walked to the edge smiling.

“Yes, my boy,” I murmured, “I’ll fish you up if you’re there, or a fistful of gravel for Jim and Frenchy – little devil! It’ll be change for his fiver;” and I chuckled at my joke.

I drew a long breath and dropped quietly into the water, head first; down, down, down – gently, softly. A couple of easy strokes and I glided along the bottom. Then something touched me. God in heaven! how it all burst on me at once! I felt four rigid fingers laid on my shoulder and drawn down my chest, the finger-nails scratching me. Instantly I made a grasp with both hands; my left fastened on the neck of a human body, and my right, just above, closed, and the fingers met through the ragged flesh of a gashed throat.

I tried to scream – the water choked me. I let go and swam on, and then up. I shot out of the water waist high, gasping and glaring wildly, and then soused under again. As I again came up I dashed the water from my eyes. I saw the surface of the pool break, and a head rose slowly. Kind Heaven! there were two! Slowly the two bodies rose across the black margin where the shadow ceased, full in the moonlit portion of the pool – cold, clear and horrible in their ghastly nakedness. And as they rose the murderous wounds appeared. The dank hair hung over their foreheads; the glazed and sightless eyeballs were fixed with the vacant stare of death on me. One bore a terrible gash from temple to eye, and lower down the bluish red slit of an assegai on the left breast.

On the other was one wound only; but how awful! The throat was cut from ear to ear; the bluish lips of the great gash hung wide apart where my hand had torn them. I could even see the severed windpipe. The head was thrown slightly back, but the eyes glared down at me with an awful stony glare, while through the parted lips the teeth gleamed and grinned cold and bright as they caught the light of the moon. One glance – half an instant – showed me all this, and then, as the figures rose waist high, I saw one arm rigid at right angles to the body from the elbow, and the stiff hand that had clawed me. For one instant they poised, balancing; then, bowing slowly over, they came down on the top of me.

Then indeed my brain seemed to go. I struggled under them. I fought and shrieked; but I suppose the bubbles came up in silence. The dead stiff hand was laid on my head and pressed me down – down, down! Then the hand of death slipped, and I was free. Once I kicked them as I struggled to the surface, and gasping, frantic, mad, made for the bank. On, on, on! O God! would I never reach it? One more effort, a wrench, and I was out. Never a pause now. One bound, and I had passed the ledge; then up and up, past the cliffs, over the rocks, cut and bleeding, on I dashed as fast as mortal man ever raced. Up, up the stony path, till, with torn feet and shaking in every limb, I reached the waggon. There was an exclamation, a pause, and then a perfect yell of laughter. The laugh saved me; the heartless cruelty of it did what nothing else could have done – it roused my temper; but for that, I believe I should have gone mad.

Harding alone came forward anxiously towards me.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “For God’s sake, what is it?”

The laugh had sobered me, and I answered quietly that it was nothing much – just a thing I would like him to see down at the pool. There were a score of questions in anxious and half-apologetic tones, for they soon realised that some thing was wrong; but I answered nothing, and so they followed me in silence, and there, on the oily, unbroken surface of the silent pool, floated in grim relief the two bodies. We pulled them out and found the corpses lashed together. At the end of the rope was an empty loop, the stone out of which I must in my struggle have dislodged. Close to the nigger we laid them, with another pile of stones to mark the spot; but who they were and where they came from none of us ever knew for certain.

The week before this two lucky diggers had passed through Newcastle from the fields, going home. Four years have now passed, letters have come, friends have inquired, but there is no news of them, and I think, poor chaps! they must have “gone home” by another route.

Chapter Six.
Two Christmas Days

It was Christmas Day at New Rush – the Christmas of ’73. No merry peals rang out to celebrate the occasion – there were no bells. The streets were not decorated with festoons or bunting – there were no streets to decorate. The usual lot of church-goers: men in broadcloth, women in gay colours, children neat and spotless, Prayer-book in hand – these were not the features of the day. There was no broadcloth, there were no women, there was no church – only long straggling rows of white tents, only a lot of holes of various depths and a lot of heaps of débris, only a lot of men in flannel shirts and moleskins, broad-brimmed hats and thick boots, the bronzed, bearded, hardy pioneers of the Diamond Fields. They had no church, but they could celebrate Christmas as well as those who had. There was a function which appealed to their feelings as Britishers – a popular, time-honoured function, whose necessary auxiliaries were at hand. They could not go to church, but they could get drunk; and they did.

All through the day the songs and cries and curses of the celebrants bore ample testimony to their devotion. The canvas canteens were crowded, and the bare spaces around them were strewn with empty bottles and victims of injudicious zeal. Within and without the one never-ending topic was diamonds; diggers backed their finds for weight or colour, shape, or number. Fortunes were held in clumsy, grog-shaken hands, and shown round as “last week’s finds;” all was clamour, festivity, and drink.

And this was Christmas Day! And the same sun that blazed down so fiercely on the drinking, and scorched the unconscious upturned faces of the drunk, shone softly on the dark hedges and snow-clad meadows of old England. It saw the fighting and drinking of a turbulent New World and the peace and quietness of a respectable Old one. It saw the adventurers seeking fortune and the homes for which they worked. And across six thousand miles of land and ocean it looked down alike on the men who waste or struggle and the women who wait and pray.

In a fly-tent, away from the noisy portion of the camp, sat John Hardy – sober. Out of sorts, out of heart, and dead out of luck, he had neither the means nor the inclination to get drunk. Ten months on the fields had about done for him. Other men came with nothing; they had made fortunes and left. He came with a few hundreds, the proceeds of the sale of his farm and stock. He had sacrificed everything to come to this El Dorado – and now! Now the farm was gone and the money too. Bit by bit it had slipped away. The last thing to go was the cart and mule; he had managed to keep those till yesterday, but the grub score had to be met – one must live, you know – and the old mule and cart went the way of the rest. Last night he had changed his last fiver and paid his boys. Now all he had in the world was a bit of ground (thirty by thirty), a few old picks and shovels, two blankets, and a revolver.

All through the day he had heard the noise of shouting and singing, but it awoke no responsive chord. Every burst of merriment jarred on him. The first man he had met had smilingly wished him a merry Christmas. Great Heaven! was the man a fool, or was it a devil jeering at him? Merry! Ay, with black ruin on him, his hopes blasted and his chances gone. And this was Christmas, when human beings were gasping and blistering between the parched plain and the blue sky, where a fierce relentless sun blazed down upon them. Everything mocked him. Truly, when a man is down, trample on him! When it comes to this, that his own feelings are a hell to him, the more material things matter little. There is a limit to mental as well as physical pain; the mind becomes numb and the feelings spent. But Hardy had not yet come to this, and he felt acutely the sarcasm on his own fête that this Christmas Day presented.

At sunset he went out to take a last look at the hole that had swallowed up his all. Indeed, it was a poor exchange for the grand old farm and the cattle and sheep and horses, and, above all, the home that his dead wife had made a heaven of for the five years of their married life. For himself he cared little, but his little girl – her child! – whom he had left behind with friends! In his mad speculation he had robbed her – his darling, the one loving memento of his dead wife! Well, to-morrow at sunrise he would take the 15 pounds for the claim, and hire himself out as a miner to the new owner.

The setting sun glinted over the workings and shed its golden light on the mine, ribbed out by roads and divisions, all in little squares like the specimen-cases in museums. There were hundreds of those squares, and his was one, and a worthless one at that. Yes, he would take the 15 pounds, and lucky to get it, for every man in camp knew he had not found a stone worth mentioning.

For over two hours he sat in the little low tent; a dusty lantern dangled from the ridge-pole and shed its weak, uncertain light around. His supper he had forgotten, and he sat at the rough packing-case table, his forehead resting on his arms, inwardly and silently cursing his luck and himself and the place with the bitterest curses his mind could frame. A revolver lay on the table before him – a grim sort of companion for a ruined man.

Presently a step came along the path – the step of one walking cautiously to avoid the scores of tent-lines and pegs that were stretched and stuck in every direction. As the step came closer Hardy looked up, and a head was thrust through the flap of the tent.

“I was taking Jack Evans home and he asked me to give you this. It came yesterday, but he’s been spreeing and forgot it.”

The man stepped in and tendered a square envelope, and stood silent.

“Won’t you sit?” asked Hardy, scarcely glancing at him as he pushed an empty gin-case forward.

“Well, just a minute, thanks.”

The young fellow sat down and watched Hardy in silence. The latter took the letter mechanically, but brightened up instantly as he saw the writing.

Gently and carefully he opened it, and from the envelope came a cheap Christmas card of flowers done in flaming colours – common and garish. That was all! No letter, nothing else. On the back was written, “For dear Father, from his little girl, Gracie.”

For a moment Hardy looked at it steadily, and then the hard sunburnt face softened, the mouth twitched once or twice, and two tears trickled slowly down and dropped on the card. The man’s head was lowered slowly until it rested on his arms again, and for a couple of minutes there was silence in the tent. The bitterness, the loneliness, the desolation were gone from his heart. What no reverses could bring about, and what no philosophy could resist, was done by a cheap, tawdry Christmas card sent by a child.

Presently he looked up and reached a small framed photograph from above his bed.

“It is from my little girl,” he said, and handed the card and photograph to the youngster.

The boy looked at them. The photograph was that of a child of about eight, with a rather pleasant expression and large, wondering, honest-looking eyes. He looked at it closely for a minute or so, and nodding kindly once or twice, handed it back without a word. As Hardy turned to replace the photograph the youngster leant forward quickly, took up the revolver, and slipped it into his pocket.

He had been gone ten minutes or so, when again a step came along; the flap was lifted, and without a word the youngster re-entered, drew the gin-case up opposite Hardy, and took a long steady look at him. To Hardy’s “Hallo! what’s up?” he returned no direct answer, but his eyes, which before had borne a calm, uninterested look, now shone with an eager brilliancy that could not fail to attract attention. His olive-brown face was pale, almost white now, and when he did speak it was, though slowly, with evident excitement, and he coughed once or twice as if feeling a dryness in the throat.

“The chaps say you are broke,” he said.

“Dead broke!” Hardy replied wonderingly.

“Have you anything left?”

“Nothing – absolutely nothing!”

“Where’s your claim?”

“Going to-morrow!”

The youngster shook his head and smiled faintly. He was so evidently in earnest that Hardy submitted in simple wonder to the cross-examination.

“Have you found any stones?”

“Not five pounds’ worth in ten months!”

“Where are your boys?”

“Gone. I paid them off yesterday.”

“No, they’re not gone. Look here,” he added more quickly, “when I was here before I took your revolver. You see, it looked to me as if you meant using it. Here it is. You can use it now on someone else.” The youngster leant forward and spoke lower and faster. “When I left you I walked along the old path a bit, but my sight was spoilt by the candle here and I got off the track. I stood for a minute, and then heard some Kaffirs talking, and I went towards the sound. I called to them, but they didn’t hear me; and I was walking up closer when I caught something that made me listen all I knew. I heard more and crept closer. I got quite close up and looked through the grass. There were five boys sitting round a stump of lighted candle; there was a bit of black cloth before them, and they were counting diamonds! There was a mustard-tin full. I crept back about twenty yards and called out. The light was blown out at once, and when I called again one boy came out. I asked him who was his baas, and he brought me to your hut.”

Hardy sat dazed for a moment. Mechanically his hand closed on the revolver that was placed in it, and then, rising, he followed the lantern which the youngster had taken.

They entered the hut and caught the boys in the act of dividing the spoil. They found the mustard-tin full, and on each of the Kaffirs a private supply hidden there from his mates.

John Hardy slept that night as those sleep who have borne their burden and have reached the place of rest. And he saw a picture in his dreams. The canvas tent was a palace of white marble, and as he lay there things of beauty were strewn around him; but, surpassing all these, there hung in mid-air before him a wreath of bright and many-coloured flowers, more lovely than any he had ever seen; and within its circle was the face of a child, and above it all there was a line of little crooked writing, and the letters, which stood out in shining gold, were, “For dear Father, from his loving little girl, Gracie.” That was John Hardy’s Christmas dream.

In 1885 New Rush and Colesburg Kopje were names well-nigh forgotten, and there reigned in their stead Kimberley and its neighbouring camps. In proportion as the tented camp had grown into a great city, in proportion as the puny diggings had become a mighty mine, in like proportion had men and things altered; and even so had John Hardy thriven and prospered. One stroke of luck had placed his foot on the first rung of Fortune’s ladder, and a cool shrewd head had done the rest. Hardy the digger, in his little canvas tent, was no more, and in his place stood John Hardy, Esq, capitalist, speculator, director of companies, etc. But the change, after all, was no change at all: the man was the same, and the very traits which, with his fellow-diggers, had stamped him as a white man, now won him the respect of a different class. Calm and self-contained, straightforward and incorruptible, he was as popular as such men can be. In one particular especially was he unchanged. His “little girl” was still his “little girl,” in spite of the fact that she was now over twenty. During ten years he had not lost sight of her for a week, and in all the world he had not one thought, one wish, one desire, that had not for its aim her happiness and pleasure. On the banks of the Vaal River he had made his home. It was an old farm, with great, big old trees and shady walks and green hedges, and there was an orange-grove that ran down to the river-side, and a boat on the water, where one could glide about breathing the breath of the orange-blossoms. Here Hardy spent nearly all his time, perfectly happy and contented in the society of his “little girl.”