"A very strange man," went on the old woman. "Too much in his kop," and
she tapped her forehead. "I tink it will burst one day; but if it does
not burst, then he will be great. I tell you that before, now I tell it
you again, for I tink his time come. Now I go cook dinner."

Benita sat by the lake till the twilight fell, and the wild geese began
to flight over her. Then she walked back to the house thinking no more
of Heer Meyer, thinking only that she was weary of this place in which
there was nothing to occupy her mind and distract it from its ever
present sorrow.

At dinner, or rather supper, that night she noticed that both her father
and his partner seemed to be suffering from suppressed excitement, of
which she thought she could guess the cause.

"Did you find your messengers, Mr. Meyer?" she asked, when the men had
lit their pipes, and the square-face--as Hollands was called in those
days, from the shape of the bottle--was set upon the rough table of
speckled buchenhout wood.

"Yes, I found them," he answered; "they are in the kitchen now." And he
looked at Mr. Clifford.

"Benita, my dear," said her father, "rather a curious thing has
happened." Her face lit up, but he shook his head. "No, nothing to do
with the shipwreck--that is all finished. Still, something that may
interest you, if you care to hear a story."

Benita nodded; she was in a mood to hear anything that would occupy her