JESS

By H. Rider Haggard

First Published 1887.




TO MY WIFE





JESS



CHAPTER I

JOHN HAS AN ADVENTURE

The day had been very hot even for the Transvaal, where the days still
know how to be hot in the autumn, although the neck of the summer is
broken--especially when the thunderstorms hold off for a week or two, as
they do occasionally. Even the succulent blue lilies--a variety of the
agapanthus which is so familiar to us in English greenhouses--hung their
long trumpet-shaped flowers and looked oppressed and miserable, beneath
the burning breath of the hot wind which had been blowing for hours like