you? especially as I am whole months older, for my father told me so.
Come, let us write our names against these marks, so that in a year or
two you may see how you outgrow me." Then with the slate pencil she
scratched "Marie" against her mark very deeply, so that it might last,
she said; after which I wrote "Allan" against mine.

Alas! Within the last dozen years chance took me past Maraisfontein
once more. The house had long been rebuilt, but this particular wall
yet stood. I rode to it and looked, and there faintly could still be
seen the name Marie, against the little line, and by it the mark that I
had made. My own name and with it subsequent measurements were gone,
for in the intervening forty years or so the sandstone had flaked away
in places. Only her autograph remained, and when I saw it I think that
I felt even worse than I did on finding whose was the old Bible that I
had bought upon the market square at Maritzburg.

I know that I rode away hurriedly without even stopping to inquire into
whose hands the farm had passed. Through the peach orchard I rode,
where the trees--perhaps the same, perhaps others--were once more in
bloom, for the season of the year was that when Marie and I first met,
nor did I draw rein for half a score of miles.

But here I may state that Marie always stayed just half an inch the
taller in body, and how much taller in mind and spirit I cannot tell.


When we had finished our measuring match Marie turned to lead me to the
house, and, pretending to observe for the first time the beautiful
bustard and the two koran hanging from my saddle, also the klipspringer
buck that Hans the Hottentot carried behind him on his horse, asked: