fever in a little tent by the waggon. When it was all over they returned
to her, and there had been a painful scene.

Mrs. Dove was lying on a bed made of the cartel, or frame strung with
strips of green hide, which had been removed from the waggon, a pretty,
pale-faced woman with a profusion of fair hair. Rachel always remembered
that scene. The hot tent with its flaps turned up to let in whatever air
there might be. Her mother in a blue dressing-gown, dingy with wear and
travel, from which one of the ribbon bows hung by a thread, her face
turned to the canvas and weeping silently. The gaunt form of her father
with his fanatical, saint-like face, pale beneath its tan, his high
forehead over which fell one grizzled lock, his thin, set lips and
far-away grey eyes, taking off his surplice and folding it up with quick
movements of his nervous hands, and herself, a scared, wondering child,
watching them both and longing to slip away to indulge her grief in
solitude. It seemed an age before that surplice was folded, pushed into a
linen bag which in their old home used to hold dirty clothes, and finally
stowed away in a deal box with a broken hinge. At length it was done, and
her father straightened himself with a sigh, and said in a voice that
tried to be cheerful:

"Do not weep, Janey. Remember this is all for the best. The Lord hath
taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord."

Her mother sat up looking at him reproachfully with her blue eyes, and
answered in her soft Scotch accent:

"You said that to me before, John, when the other one went, down at
Grahamstown, and I am tired of hearing it. Don't ask me to bless the Lord
when He takes my babes, no, nor any mother, He Who could spare them if He