stand sometimes in a place where she has stood before."


Chapter 2.XI. An Unfinished Letter.

Gregory Rose had been gone seven months. Em sat alone on a white sheepskin
before the fire.

The August night-wind, weird and shrill, howled round the chimneys and
through the crannies, and in walls and doors, and uttered a long low cry as
it forced its way among the clefts of the stones on the kopje. It was a
wild night. The prickly-pear tree, stiff and upright as it held its arms,
felt the wind's might, and knocked its flat leaves heavily together, till
great branches broke off. The Kaffers, as they slept in their straw huts,
whispered one to another that before morning there would not be an armful
of thatch left on the roofs; and the beams of the wagon-house creaked and
groaned as if it were heavy work to resist the importunity of the wind.

Em had not gone to bed. Who could sleep on a night like this? So in the
dining room she had lighted a fire, and sat on the ground before it,
turning the roaster-cakes that lay on the coals to bake. It would save
work in the morning; and she blew out the light because the wind through
the window-chinks made it flicker and run; and she sat singing to herself
as she watched the cakes. They lay at one end of the wide hearth on a bed
of coals, and at the other end a fire burnt up steadily, casting its amber
glow over Em's light hair and black dress, with the ruffle of crepe about
the neck, and over the white curls of the sheepskin on which she sat.

Louder and more fiercely yet howled the storm; but Em sang on, and heard
nothing but the words of her song, and heard them only faintly, as