"Heer Allan," he said, looking round to see that we were not overheard,
"I have a little writing for you also," and he produced from his pouch a
note that was unaddressed.

I tore it open eagerly. Within was written in French, which no Boer
would understand if the letter fell into his hands:


"Be brave and faithful, and remember, as I shall. Oh! love of my heart,
adieu, adieu!"


This message was unsigned; but what need was there of signature?

I wrote an answer of a sort that may be imagined, though what the exact
words were I cannot remember after the lapse of nearly half a century.
Oddly enough, it is the things I said which I recall at such a distance
of time rather than the things which I wrote, perhaps because, when once
written, my mind being delivered, troubled itself with them no more. So
in due course the Hottentot departed with my father's letter and my own,
and that was the last direct communication which we had with Henri or
Marie Marais for more than a year.

I think that those long months were on the whole the most wretched I
have ever spent. The time of life which I was passing through is always
trying; that period of emergence from youth into full and responsible
manhood which in Africa generally takes place earlier than it does here
in England, where young men often seem to me to remain boys up to
five-and-twenty. The circumstances which I have detailed made it