Now while the boy lay asleep Jan mounted his horse and rode for two
hours to the stead of our neighbour, the Heer van Vooren. This Van
Vooren was a very rich man, by far the richest of us outlying Boers, and
he had come to live in these wilds because of some bad act that he had
done; I think that it was the shooting of a coloured person when he was
angry. He was a strange man and much feared, sullen in countenance, and
silent by nature. It was said that his grandmother was a chieftainess
among the red Kaffirs, but if so, the blood showed more in his son and
only child than in himself. Of this son, who in after years was named
Swart Piet, and his evil doings I shall have to tell later in my story,
but even then his dark face and savage temper had earned for him the
name of "the little Kaffir."

Now the wife of the Heer van Vooren was dead, and he had a tutor for his
boy Piet, a poor Hollander body who could speak English. That man knew
figures also, for once when, thinking that I should be too clever for
him, I asked him how often the wheel of our big waggon would turn round
travelling between our farm and Capetown Castle, he took a rule and
measured the wheel, then having set down some figures on a bit of paper,
and worked at them for a while, he told me the answer. Whether it was
right or wrong I did not know, and said so, whereon the poor creature
grew angry, and lied in his anger, for he swore that he could tell how
often the wheel would turn in travelling from the earth to the sun or
moon, and also how far we were from those great lamps, a thing that is
known to God only, Who made them for our comfort. It is little wonder,
therefore, that with such unholy teaching Swart Piet grew up so bad.

Well, Jan went to beg the loan of this tutor, thinking that he would
be able to understand what the English boy said, and in due course the