saw nothing more of her till supper time. Bessie told him that she said
she was busy packing; but, as one can only take twenty pounds weight of
luggage in a post-cart, this did not quite convince him that it was so
in fact.

At supper Jess was, if possible, even more quiet than she had been
at dinner. After it was over, he asked her to sing, but she declined,
saying that she had given up singing for the present, and persisting
in her statement in spite of the chorus of remonstrance it aroused. The
birds only sing whilst they are mating; and it is, by the way, a curious
thing, and suggestive of the theory that the same great principles
pervade all nature, that now when her trouble had overtaken her,
and that she had lost the love which had suddenly sprung from her
heart--full-grown and clad in power as Athena sprang from the head of
Jove--Jess had no further inclination to use her divine gift of song.
Probably it was nothing more than a coincidence, although a strange one.

The arrangement was, that on the morrow Jess was to be driven in the
Cape cart to Martinus-Wesselstroom, more commonly called Wakkerstroom,
there to catch the post-cart, which was timed to leave the town at
mid-day, though when it would leave was quite another matter. Post-carts
are not particular to a day or so in the Transvaal.

Old Silas Croft was to drive her with Bessie, who wished to do some
shopping in Wakkerstroom, as ladies sometimes will; but at the last
moment the old man felt a premonitory twinge of the rheumatism to which
he was a martyr, and could not go. So, of course, John volunteered, and,
though Jess raised some difficulties, Bessie furthered the idea, and in
the end his offer was accepted.