the letter. The man told him that it was very important, and that I
should reward the bearer well if it were delivered safely.

While the Jew talked (I think he was a Jew) I was opening the
sail-cloth. Within was a piece of linen which had been oiled to keep
out water, addressed in some red pigment to myself or my father. This,
too, I opened, not without difficulty, for it was carefully sewn up, and
found within it a letter-packet, also addressed to myself or my father,
in the handwriting of Marie.

Great Heaven! How my heart jumped at that sight! Calling to Hans to
make the smous comfortable and give him food, I went into my own room,
and there read the letter, which ran thus:


"MY DEAR ALLAN,--I do not know whether the other letters I have written
to you have ever come to your hands, or indeed if this one will. Still,
I send it on chance by a wandering Portuguese half-breed who is going to
Delagoa Bay, about fifty miles, I believe, from the place where I now
write, near the Crocodile River. My father has named it Maraisfontein,
after our old home. If those letters reached you, you will have learned
of the terrible things we went through on our journey; the attacks by
the Kaffirs in the Zoutpansberg region, who destroyed one of our parties
altogether, and so forth. If not, all that story must wait, for it is
too long to tell now, and, indeed, I have but little paper, and not much
pencil. It will be enough to say, therefore, that to the number of
thirty-five white people, men, women and children, we trekked at the
beginning of the summer season, when the grass was commencing to grow,
from the Lydenburg district--an awful journey over mountains and through
flooded rivers. After many delays, some of them months long, we reached