case to-day might and probably would be their case to-morrow. Therefore
they were prepared to ride at once.

Then it was that my father intervened.

"Heeren," he said, "it seems to me that before you seek vengeance,
which, as the Book tells us, is the Lord's, it would be well, especially
for the Heer Marais, to return thanks for what has been saved to him. I
mean his daughter, who might now very easily have been dead or worse."

He added that goods came or went according to the chances of fortune,
but a beloved human life, once lost, could not be restored. This
precious life had been preserved to him, he would not say by man--here
he glanced at me--but by the Ruler of the world acting through man.
Perhaps those present did not quite understand what he (my father) had
learned from Hans the Hottentot, that I, his son, had been about to blow
out the brains of Marie Marais and my own when the sound of the shots of
those who had been gathered through the warning which I left before I
rode from the Mission Station, had stayed my hand. He called upon the
said Hans and Marie herself to tell them the story, since I was too weak
to do so.

Thus adjured, the little Hottentot, smothered as he was in blood, stood
up. In the simple, dramatic style characteristic of his race, he
narrated all that had happened since he met the woman on the veld but
little over twelve hours before, till the arrival of the rescue party.
Never have I seen a tale followed with deeper interest, and when at last
Hans pointed to me lying on the ground and said, "There is he who did
these things which it might be thought no man could do--he, but a boy,"
even from those phlegmatic Dutchmen there came a general cheer. But,