sign to me to cease from asking questions, nor did I say any more till
we had gone to bed and everybody else in the house was asleep.

"Now," I said, "tell me your bad news, for bad news you have had."

"Wife," he answered, "it is this. In the dorp yonder I met a man who
had come from Port Elizabeth. He told me that there at the port were two
Englishmen, who had recently arrived, a Scotch lord, and a lawyer with
red hair. When the Englishmen heard that he was from this part of the
country they fell into talk with him, saying that they came upon a
strange errand. It seems that when the great ship was wrecked upon this
coast ten years ago there was lost in her a certain little boy who,
if he had lived, would to-day have been a very rich noble in Scotland.
Wife, you may know who that little boy was without my telling you his
name."

I nodded and turned cold all over my body, for I could guess what was
coming.

"Now for a long while those who were interested in him supposed that
this lad was certainly dead with all the others on board that ship, but
a year or more ago, how I know not, a rumour reached them that one male
child who answered to his description had been saved alive and adopted
by some boers living in the Transkei. By this time the property and the
title that should be his had descended to a cousin of the child's, but
this relation being a just man determined before he took them to come
to Africa and find out the truth for himself, and there he is at Port
Elizabeth, or rather by this time he is on his road to our place.
Therefore it would seem that the day is at hand when we shall see the
last of Ralph."