Their subsequent history up to the date of the opening of this story may
be told in very few words. As a missionary the Reverend John Dove was not
a success. The Boers in the eastern part of the Cape Colony where he
laboured, did not appreciate his efforts to Christianise their slaves. The
slaves did not appreciate them either, inasmuch as, saint though he might
be, he quite lacked the sympathetic insight which would enable him to
understand that a native with thousands of generations of savagery behind
him is a different being from a highly educated Christian, and one who
should be judged by another law. Their sins, amongst which he included all
their most cherished inherited customs, appalled him, as he continually
proclaimed from the housetops. Moreover, when occasionally he did snatch a
brand from the burning, and the said brand subsequently proved that it was
still alight, or worse still, replaced its original failings by those of
the white man, such as drink, theft and lying, whereof before it had been
innocent, he would openly condemn it to eternal punishment. Further, he
was too insubordinate, or, as he called it, too honest, to submit to the
authority of his local superiors in the Church, and therefore would only
work for his own hand. Finally he caused his "cup to overflow," as he
described it, or, in plain English, made the country too hot to hold him,
by becoming involved in a bitter quarrel with the Boers. Of these, on the
whole, worthy folk, he formed the worst; and in the main a very unjust
opinion, which he sent to England to be reprinted in Church papers, or to
the Home Government to be published in Blue-books. In due course these
documents reached South Africa again, where they were translated into
Dutch and became incidentally one of the causes of the Great Trek.

The Boers were furious and threatened to shoot him as a slanderer. The
English authorities were also furious, and requested him to cease from
controversy or to leave the country. At last, stubborn as he might be,