the helpless, and that Power took those poor, homeless, wandering
children under its wing. The captain of the vessel befriended them,
and when at last they reached Durban some of the passengers made a
subscription, and paid an old Boer, who was coming up this way with his
wife to the Transvaal, to take them under his charge. The Boer and his
_vrouw_ treated the children fairly well, but they did not do one thing
more than they bargained for. At the turn from the Wakkerstroom road,
that you came along to-day, they put the girls down, for they had no
luggage with them, and told them that if they went along there they
would come to _Meinheer_ Croft's house. That was in the middle of the
afternoon, and they were till eight o'clock getting here, poor little
dears, for the track was fainter then than it is now, and they wandered
off into the veldt, and would have perished there in the wet and cold
had they not chanced to see the lights of the house. That was how my
nieces came here, Captain Niel, and here they have been ever since,
except for a couple of years when I sent them to the Cape for schooling,
and a lonely man I was when they were away."

"And how about the father?" asked John Niel, deeply interested. "Did you
ever hear any more of him?"

"Hear of him, the villain!" almost shouted the old man, jumping up in
wrath. "Ay, d--n him, I heard of him. What do you think? The two chicks
had been with me some eighteen months, long enough for me to learn to
love them with all my heart, when one fine morning, as I was seeing
about the new kraal wall, I saw a fellow come riding up on an old
raw-boned grey horse. Up he comes to me, and as he came I looked at
him, and said to myself, 'You are a drunkard you are, and a rogue, it's
written on your face, and, what's more, I know your face.' You see I did
not guess that it was a son of my own father that I was looking at. How