"Your MARIE."


Such was this awful letter. I still have it; it lies before me, those
ragged sheets of paper covered with faint pencil-writing that is blotted
here and there with tear marks, some of them the tears of Marie who
wrote, some of them the tears of me who read. I wonder if there exists
a more piteous memorial of the terrible sufferings of the trek-Boers,
and especially of such of them as forced their way into the poisonous
veld around Delagoa, as did this Marais expedition and those under the
command of Triechard. Better, like many of their people, to have
perished at once by the spears of Umzilikazi and other savages than to
endure these lingering tortures of fever and starvation.

As I finished reading this letter my father, who had been out visiting
some of his Mission Kaffirs, entered the house, and I went into the
sitting-room to meet him.

"Why, Allan, what is the matter with you?" he asked, noting my
tear-stained face.

I gave him the letter, for I could not speak, and with difficulty he
deciphered it.

"Merciful God, what dreadful news!" he said when he had finished.
"Those poor people! those poor, misguided people! What can be done for
them?"

"I know one thing that can be done, father, or at any rate can be