"I don't know what I think," answered John, looking straight into
Muller's eyes, which fell before his own. "All I know is that your
curious mistake very nearly cost me my life. Look here!" and he took a
lock of his brown hair out of the crown of his perforated hat and showed
it to the other.

"Ay, it was very close. Let us thank God that you escaped."

"It could not well have been closer, _Meinheer_. I hope that, for your
own sake and for the sake of the people who go out shooting with you,
you will not make such a mistake again. Good-morning!"

The handsome Boer, or Anglo-Boer, sat on his horse stroking his
beautiful beard and gazing curiously after John Niel's sturdy
English-looking figure as he marched towards the cart, for, of course,
the wounded vilderbeeste had long ago vanished.

"I wonder," he said to himself aloud, as he turned his horse's head
and rode leisurely away, "if the old _volk_ are right after all, and if
there is a God." Frank Muller was sufficiently impregnated with modern
ideas to be a free-thinker. "It almost seems like it," he went on, "else
how did it come that the one bullet passed under his belly and the other
just touched his head without harming him? I aimed carefully enough too,
and I could make the shot nineteen times out of twenty and not miss.
Bah, a God! I snap my fingers at Him. Chance is the only god. Chance
blows men about like the dead grass, till death comes down like the
veldt fire and devours them. But there are men who ride chance as one
rides a young colt--ay, who turn its headlong rushing and rearing to
their own ends--who let it fly hither and thither till it is weary, and