cock-crow--and, stay--see that the horses have got out of the kraal so
that you cannot find them too easily in case the Reverend wishes to
start very early. But do not let them wander far, for here we are no
welcome guests."

"Yes, baas. By the way, baas, the Heer Pereira, who tried to cheat you
over those geese, is sleeping in an empty house not more than two miles
away. He drinks coffee when he wakes up in the morning, and his
servant, who makes it, is my good friend. Now would you like me to put
a little something into it? Not to kill him, for that is against the
law in the Book, but just to make him quite mad, for the Book says
nothing about that. If so, I have a very good medicine, one that you
white people do not know, which improves the taste of the coffee, and it
might save much trouble. You see, if he came dancing about the place
without any clothes on, like a common Kaffir, the Heer Marais, although
_he_ is really mad also, might not wish for him as a son-in-law."

"Oh! go to the devil if you are not there already," I replied, and
turned over as though to sleep.


There was no need for me to have instructed that faithful creature, the
astute but immoral Hans, to call me early, as the lady did her mother in
the poem, for I do not think that I closed an eye that night. I spare
my reflections, for they can easily be imagined in the case of an
earnest-natured lad who was about to be bereft of his first love.

Long before the dawn I stood in the peach orchard, that orchard where we
had first met, and waited. At length Marie came stealing between the
tree trunks like a grey ghost, for she was wrapped in some