My journey back to the Mission Station was a strange contrast to that
which I had made thence a few days before. Then, the darkness, the
swift mare beneath me rushing through it like a bird, the awful terror
in my heart lest I should be too late, as with wild eyes I watched the
paling stars and the first gathering grey of dawn. Now, the creaking of
the ox-cart, the familiar veld, the bright glow of the peaceful
sunlight, and in my heart a great thankfulness, and yet a new terror
lest the pure and holy love which I had won should be stolen away from
me by force or fraud.

Well, as the one matter had been in the hand of God, so was the other,
and with that knowledge I must be content. The first trial had ended in
death and victory. How would the second end? I wondered, and those
words seemed to jumble themselves up in my mind and shape a sentence
that it did not conceive. It was: "In the victory that is death,"
which, when I came to think of it, of course, meant nothing. How
victory could be death I did not understand--at any rate, at that time,
I who was but a lad of small experience.

As we trekked along comfortably enough, for the road was good and the
cart, being on springs, gave my leg no pain, I asked my father what he
thought that the Heer Marais had meant when he told us that the Boers
had business at Maraisfontein, during which our presence as Englishmen
would not be agreeable to them.

"Meant, Allan? He meant that these traitorous Dutchmen are plotting
against their sovereign, and are afraid lest we should report their
treason. Either they intend to rebel because of that most righteous