his arm. He looked back to see that she was still sleeping, and jumped down
into one of the sluits. He walked down the bed of the sluit a little way
and came to an overhanging bank, under which, sitting on the red sand, were
two men. One was a tiny, ragged, old bushman, four feet high; the other
was an English navvy, in a dark blue blouse. They cut the kid's throat
with the navvy's long knife, and covered up the blood with sand, and buried
the entrails and skin. Then they talked, and quarrelled a little; and then
they talked quietly again.

The Hottentot man put a leg of the kid under his coat and left the rest of
the meat for the two in the sluit, and walked away.

When little Jannita awoke it was almost sunset. She sat up very
frightened, but her goats were all about her. She began to drive them
home. "I do not think there are any lost," she said.

Dirk, the Hottentot, had brought his flock home already, and stood at the
kraal door with his ragged yellow trousers. The fat old Boer put his stick
across the door, and let Jannita's goats jump over, one by one. He counted
them. When the last jumped over: "Have you been to sleep today?" he said;
"there is one missing."

Then little Jannita knew what was coming, and she said, in a low voice,
"No." And then she felt in her heart that deadly sickness that you feel
when you tell a lie; and again she said, "Yes."

"Do you think you will have any supper this evening?" said the Boer.

"No," said Jannita.