"When will that be?"

"I am not his nurse and cannot tell; perhaps in three months, perhaps
six."

Now again they consulted, and once more went on:

"Was the boy, Ralph Mackenzie, or Kenzie, shipwrecked in the _India_ in
the year 1824?"

"Dear Lord!" I cried, affecting to lose my patience, "am I an old
Kaffir wife up before the Landdrost for stealing hens that I should be
cross-questioned in this fashion? Set out all your tale at once, man,
and I will answer it."

Thereon, shrugging his shoulders, the lawyer produced a paper which the
interpreter translated to me. In it were written down the names of the
passengers who were upon the vessel _India_ when she sailed from a place
called Bombay, and among the names those of Lord and Lady Glenthirsk and
of their son, the Honourable Ralph Mackenzie, aged nine. Then followed
the evidence of one or two survivors of the shipwreck, which stated that
Lady Glenthirsk and her son were seen to reach the shore in safety in
the boat that was launched from the sinking ship. After this came a
paragraph from an English newspaper published in Capetown, dated not
two years before, and headed "Strange Tale of the Sea," which paragraph,
with some few errors, told the story of the finding of Ralph--though how
the writing man knew it I know not, unless it was through the tutor with
the blue spectacles of whom I have spoken--and said that he was still
living on the farm of Jan Botmar in the Transkei. This was all that was
in the paper. I asked to look at it and kept it, saying in the morning