Mr. Frank Muller stopped to dinner and far on into the afternoon, for
his lost ox seemed to have entirely slipped his memory. There he sat
close to the fair Bessie, smoking and drinking gin-water, and talking
with great volubility in English sprinkled with Boer-Dutch terms that
John Niel did not understand, and gazing at the young lady in a manner
which John somehow found unpleasant. Of course it was no affair of his,
and he had no interest in the matter, but for all that he thought this
remarkable-looking Dutchman exceedingly disagreeable. At last, indeed,
he could bear it no longer, and hobbled out for a little walk with Jess,
who, in her abrupt way, offered to show him the garden.

"You don't like that man?" she said to him, as they went slowly down the
slope in front of the house.

"No; do you?"

"I think," replied Jess quietly, but with much emphasis, "that he is
the most odious man I ever saw--and the most curious." Then she relapsed
into silence, only broken now and again by an occasional remark about
the flowers and trees.

Half an hour afterwards, when they arrived again at the top of the
slope, Mr. Muller was just riding off down the avenue of blue gums. By
the verandah stood a Hottentot named Jantje, who had been holding the
Dutchman's horse. He was a curious, wizened-up little fellow, dressed
in rags, and with hair like the worn tags of a black woollen carpet.
His age might have been anything between twenty-five and sixty; it was
impossible to form any opinion on the point. Just now, however,
his yellow monkey face was convulsed with an expression of intense