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“What if they are stranded half-way?” said the other, with an evil sneer.

“Then the jackals will eat them. Either way it matters nothing.”

Darker and darker it grew. The storm cloud began to throw out loose masses of flying scud, through which the moon now and again shone out in fitful gleam. Still, to these two their prey came not in sight.

“I like not this,” growled Hermanus. “This is no light to shoot by. We may miss one or both, and to miss one is as bad as to miss both. Besides, the river may not take them down after all. We two may be hanged for to-night’s work, Gideon.”

“Hanged? Oh, yes! See now, Mani, why I would have it done with Mausers. Their bullet makes a small hole, our Martini bullet makes a large hole. And there is not a Mauser or a Lee-Metford in the Wildschutsberg. Afterwards our guns are examined, and they are the old Martinis. Our bullet does not fit the hole. Now, do you not see, you eselkop?”

“Ja, I see. But —stil, man. Here they come.”

A clink of the hoof of a shod horse coming down the track was borne faintly upward. The two assassins crouched in their ambush, a tigerish glare in their eyes. Their pieces were levelled.

“Ready, Hermanus,” whispered Gideon Roux. “When they come six paces the other side of yon white stone, then shoot.”

Chapter Eight.
Tragical – And Aletta

Hans Vermaak had and had not carried out his instructions; which is to say that in so far as he had he had done so by halves.

By nature he was a genial soul was Hans Vermaak, by inclination a jovial one. He would not wantonly have hurt a fly or an Englishman, let alone so companionable a one as Colvin Kershaw; but then the terrible point to which racial hatred was worked up had engendered a feverish thirst for conspiring that was almost Celtic, in the stolid and pre-eminently practical Boer. The discovery of the concealed arms would be a serious thing, a very serious thing, but of its seriousness, great as that was, they took an exaggerated view. Inherently the Boer is a great respecter of the law and of the person of its representative or representatives, and most of these were sufficiently unsophisticated to look upon their undoubtedly treasonable proceeding as a hanging matter if brought to the notice of the authorities. Hence none felt any qualm as to the strong measures to be adopted towards the hostile sharer of the secret.

In vino Veritas! When we say that none felt a qualm we should have exempted Hans Vermaak – in his cups. The misgiving expressed by Gideon Roux as to the potential liberality of his spouse in the matter of the grog was not unfounded. There was enough in the bottle to make three Dutchmen – two would not partake – very lively, and the liveliest of all was Hans Vermaak. He became, moreover, enormously fraternal towards Colvin, who was deftly drawing him out, and finally did exactly as Gideon Roux had predicted, insisted upon his remaining the night, for he, Hans, was Gideon’s brother-in-law, and therefore one of the family. He forgot the patriot cause, and only remembered it to declare that this was too good an Englishman to be shot, and so forth, which declaration under ordinary circumstances might mean nothing, but read by the light of subsequent events and the speaker’s manner, Colvin took to mean rather a great deal.

The latter made several futile attempts at getting away, and at length succeeded. He himself, although he had borne his share, was in no wise affected by the liquor he had been taking – for the matter of that he could have drunk the lot of them under the table over and over again – and throughout the talk, which became more and more boisterous and unguarded, had kept an ear open and an eye keenly alive to every sign. But by the time he did break loose, and Gert was standing before the door with the horses saddled up, he realised that the more prudential side of his resolution had failed and that an infinitesimal portion of his homeward journey would be accomplished by daylight.

He had bidden good-bye all-round – not failing to observe during the process the awful look of scare upon the face of his hostess as she just touched his hand with a limp, moist paw. He had paced his horse about a hundred yards from the door, not sorry to see the last of the frowsy, dirty place, when he heard his name called. Turning in the saddle, he beheld the genial Hans hurrying towards him.

“Which way do you go home by?” said the Dutchman, somewhat flurriedly.

“Oh, the usual way, Hans.”

“So? You are going home, then.”

“Oh yes.”

“But you must not. Klip Poort is bad to go through at night Ja, it is bad, very bad. Go some other road. There is the road to Stephanus De la Rey’s, for instance. Go by it.”

“But it is about twice the distance,” objected Colvin, who began to read considerable meaning into the other’s anxiety regarding his movements.

“That matters nothing. Look, you are a good sort of Englishman and I like you. Klip Poort is bad to go through at night, very bad.”

“Very well, Hans, I’ll take your advice. So long.”

Klip Poort, the point referred to, was a narrow, rugged defile overhung with large rocks, about five miles on his homeward way. As well as the road passing through, it likewise gave passage to the Sneeuw River, which, when full to any great extent, flooded the roadway to some depth. It might very well be to this form of danger that the Boer’s hidden warning applied, and yet some unaccountable instinct warned Colvin that it was not.

“Gert.”

“Baas?”

“Did you hear what Hans Vermaak was saying just now?”

“Part of it, sir.”

“Why do you think he wanted us not to go back by way of Klip Poort?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Gert, you are an ass.”

“Perhaps he thought the river might be ‘down,’ sir. The clouds are very thick and black up in the bergen.”

“Yes.”

An indescribable feeling of helpless apprehensiveness came over Colvin, and indeed it is a creepy thing the consciousness that at any step during the next half-dozen miles or so you are a target for a concealed enemy whose marksmanship is unerring. For this was about what he had reduced the situation to in his own mind, and within the same heartily anathematised the foolish curiosity which had moved him to go up and explore the hiding-place of the concealed arms. That Gideon Roux and his confederate were aware that he shared their secret he now believed. They must have waited to watch him, and have seen him come out of the cave; and with this idea the full force of Vermaak’s warning came home to him.

But was that warning genuine? Was it not destined rather to induce him to take the other way? It was impossible to determine. Sorely perplexed, he rode on, thinking the matter over, and that deeply. The sky overhead grew darker and darker with the spread of a great cloud – the earth with the fall of evening. There was a moon, but it was obscured. By the time the rocks which marked the entrance to the poort came into view it was already night.

Two ways branched here – one his ordinary way home, the other that which Hans Vermaak had urged him to take. Some twenty feet down, at the bottom of a precipitous slope, was the river bed, dry save for a shallow, stagnant reach here and there. Which way should he take? Now was the time to decide.

“Get on, Aasvogel, you fool! Ah, would you, then?”

This to his horse, accompanied by a sharp rowelling with each heel. For the animal had stopped short with a suddenness calculated to unseat and certainly irritate the rider, and was backing and shying like the panic-stricken idiot it was; the cause of all this fluster being a white stone standing almost vertically up from the roadside, in the gloom looking for all the world like the traditional ghost.

“Whigge – whirr!” Something hummed through the air, and that so near he could feel the draught. Two jets of flame had darted forth from the hillside above, simultaneously with a dry, double crack. Two more followed, but had it been a hundred Colvin was utterly powerless to investigate, for his horse, which had already sprung forward beneath the sharp dig of the spurs, now took to wild and frantic flight, and for some moments was completely out of hand. By the time he got it in hand again he had been carried a good mile from the scene of this startling though not wholly unexpected occurrence.

Two things came into Colvin’s mind, as eventually he reined in his panting, snorting steed. One of the bullets, at any rate, had missed him very narrowly, but by just the distance the animal had backed when shying from the ghostly object which had scared it; and but for the fact of his being a first-rate rider the suddenness of the bolt would have unseated him, and he would now be lying in the road at the mercy of his would-be assassins. But – where was Gert?

He looked around. The clouds had parted a little and the moon was visible through a rift thus formed; indeed it was the sudden flash of the moonlight upon the white stone that had so terrified the horse at first. The light revealed the mountain slopes rising up around, but of his servant there was no sign. He listened intently. No sound, save the creaking of the saddle, caused by the violently heaving flanks of his panting steed, and now and again a mutter of distant thunder away up in the mountains. Where was Gert?

Dismounting, he led the animal a little way off the road, and sat down under a large boulder to think out the situation. The warning of Hans Vermaak again came into his mind. It looked genuine as viewed by subsequent lights, but whether it was so or not, it was useless, for the murderers had altered their original plan, clearly resolving to provide against the contingency of his choosing the other of the two roads, by shooting him before he should come to the point where these parted. Well, they had not shot him, but it had been a narrow shave – very.

But if they had not shot him had they shot Gert? It looked uncommonly like it. Only the four shots had been fired – of that he felt certain – but since his horse had taken matters into its own hands, or, rather, legs, he had obtained neither sight nor sound of Gert. Seated there in the darkness, he was conscious of a very considerable feeling of indignation begotten of a dual reason – that he had had a mean advantage taken of him, and that his property, in the person of Gert Bondelzwart, had been interfered with.

What was to be done next? Should he go back? To do so would be to commit an act of fatal rashness, for it would be to expose himself once more to the fire of his concealed cowardly foes, who would not be likely to let slip a second opportunity. True, he had his revolver, but not for a moment would they be likely to come near enough to give him any chance of using it. No – to go back would be simply throwing away his life. Had it been a white man and a comrade, he would unhesitatingly have done so. But Gert was a Griqua, and, though not exactly a savage, had all the cunning and resource and endurance of generations of savage ancestry. If he were alive, why then, amid the rocks and the darkness, he would soon elude his enemies; if he were dead, Colvin did not see any sense in throwing away his own life merely to ascertain that fact.

The moon had gone in, and a misty scud-wrack spreading itself overhead was creeping around the dim crags on high. There was a smell of rain in the air, and a fitful puff of wind came singing down the valley, laden with an icy breath. Colvin shivered, and as he looked anxiously skyward a large drop or two of rain plashed down on his face. There would be a deluge in a moment, and he had nothing to meet it with save the clothes in which he stood up.

Suddenly the horse, which had been standing with its head down still panting after its race and scare, pricked up its ears and snorted, then began backing away. Colvin had just time to seize the bridle-rein, or it would have been off in wild stampede. And now every vein in his body quivered with excitement. His revolver was in his hand. Let them come. The chances now were something like equal.

But it is not a pleasant thing to know that you are being stalked in the dark by a persistent and murderous foe; and as for some minutes no further sign occurred the excitement became dashed with something like apprehension, then succeeded a feeling of relief. The horse had been scared by one of the ordinary sights of the veldt – a sneaking jackal – perhaps a meerkat – in short, anything moving will startle a horse in the dark, let alone one so thoroughly “in the dispositions” for panic as this one now was. But just then a renewed snort, accompanied by a plunge and a violent tugging at the bridle-rein, set all Colvin’s pulses bounding again; and though he endeavoured to do so silently, so as not to betray his exact whereabouts, the hammer of his pistol, as he drew it up, gave forth a sharp click upon the stillness.

Out of the darkness came a voice – a beseeching voice – saying in Boer Dutch:

“Nay, Baas, don’t shoot. My well-loved Baas, don’t shoot.”

“Gert, you fool, come here.”

“Yes, it is Gert, Baas,” answered the voice in a tone of intense delight and relief. “Maagtig! I thought it was those schelm Boers. I thought you were shot. I thought I was shot. I thought we were all shot.”

“Well, we are not. But where is Pansy?”

“She was shot, Baas. Ah, the poor mare! She just sank down in the road with her legs under her. I had hardly time to roll off when she was up again, gave a stagger, and toppled over into the river bed. I crouched down in the sluit by the roadside and lay perfectly still – still as a hare – until the moon went in again. Then I crept away. Ja, it was a fearful time. I thought I could feel the bullets through me every minute. Maagtig! but he is a schelm Boer is Gideon Roux.”

“Gideon Roux? Why do you think it was Gideon Roux, Gert?”

“It was, Baas. He and Hermanus Delport. I would swear to it,” rejoined the Griqua excitedly. “They looked murder when they were talking to me. There was murder in their faces, Ja, it is those two.”

Colvin cursed to himself, and vowed revenge. He was fond of his horses, and these two rascals had shot one of his best. At the same time he owned to himself ruefully that the chance of carrying out such vengeance was remote. At present he was far more an object for their vengeance than they for his.

“Come now, Gert, we must get along. Lay hold of my stirrup-leather and trot alongside.”

They got into the road again, but with the moon behind the cloud and the rain that was beginning to fall it became very dark. What if the vindictive Dutchmen, guessing they had failed, were to take a short cut behind the ridge and voerlij them further down? The thought was unpleasant, to put it mildly.

Now there was a whirl and a roar in the air, and, in an icy blast, the rain swooped down in torrents. Colvin, destitute of macintosh or wrap of any kind, was soaked through and through in about two minutes, and shivered exceedingly. Fortunately the deluge was behind him, or, coming down obliquely as it did, Aasvogel could hardly have made headway against it. Now and then a vivid flash of lightning gleamed forth, showing the sheer of the great crags overhead and the glistening slopes studded with wet stones.

“Hurry up, Gert. Put your best foot forward, man. We have to race the river this shot. The Ratels Hoek drift will be running twelve feet deep before we get there if we don’t look smart.”

And the Griqua, puffing and perspiring, did put his best foot forward.

Stephanus De la Rey, having just finished his supper, had come out on to the stoep to look at the weather. The deluge of the last hour had subsided, but the clouds, black as ink and unbroken, gave promise of a repetition of the same.

“Aha!” he said, gleefully to himself. “The drought is at an end. The river is already coming down well, and the dams must be overflowing. I shall pump a lot of water on to the lucerne beds to-morrow. But – What is that?”

The clink of shod horse hoofs came upon the wind through the swirl and roar of the fast-swelling river. He stood listening intently. The sound ceased, then arose again, now on this side of the drift. The next moment a very soaked and dripping horseman emerged into the light of the windows, and beside him trotted a pedestrian, no less soaked and dripping, but very much blown.

“Why, Colvin, where are you from? Maagtig, kerel! but you are wet,” he cried. Then raising his voice: “Windvogel, Swaartbooi. Turn out, you schepsels, and take the Baas’ horse.”

“Wet? I’m nearly dead with cold, Stephanus. So bring along a soepje, old chap, and let’s get to a fire and dry myself.”

“Dry yourself? It’s dry clothes you have to get into. Come this way. My volk will see to your horse. Here now, what can we get you into? My things are too wide for you, Cornelis’ and Jan’s are too small. You will have to get into some of mine.”

And having dragged out of a drawer a complete refit for his guest, whom he had marched straight into his own room, the genial Dutchman went out and reappeared in a moment with a decanter of excellent “dop” and glasses.

“That’s grand!” ejaculated Colvin, fortifying himself with a liberal soepje during the changing process. But not yet was he going to impart his adventures to his host. The latter had a great laugh over his attempts to carry off the fit of clothes that were both too long and too wide.

“Well, no matter,” he said. “You are dry, at any rate, and by this time warm. So come along in and have some supper.”

Colvin followed his host into the dining-room. The evening meal was just over, but already a place had been cleared and laid for him. As he shook hands with Mrs De la Rey, he noticed a girl – one he did not recollect ever having seen before. She was just receiving a dish from a Hottentot servant, and arranging it on the table at the place laid for him. Then, turning, she came up to him, with outstretched hand, and a bright smile of cordial welcome on her face.

“Oh, I had forgotten,” said Stephanus. “You two have not met before. Colvin, this is my eldest girl – Aletta.”

Chapter Nine.
“Only a Boer Girl.”

A vision of the portraits flashed through Colvin’s mind – the portraits at which he had so often looked, with but faint interest, representing as they did a heavy-looking awkward girl, with hunched shoulders, whom he had set down in his own mind as a mere squat, ugly replica of Condaas. One of the portraits itself stared him in the face even now, over and beyond the shoulder of its original. And this was the original! He saw before him a tall and graceful girl, straight as a dart. Her head, slightly thrown back, as she greeted him with frank and self-possessed composure, was beautifully poised, and crowned with a bounteous coil of silky brown hair. She had lustrous hazel eyes, which could light up in a wonderful way when animated, and a fresh and delicate colour. He noticed, too, that the hand which he took in his was long and soft and tapering – in short, she looked thoroughbred from head to heel, and yet, judged by the most ordinary canons of beauty, he recognised that Aletta De la Rey was not even pretty.

Her features were lacking. They were not regular, and the mouth was somewhat too large. But it was redeemed by white and even teeth, and a way of rippling into a sudden, whole-hearted, and very musical laugh; indeed, the whole expression of her face would light up in a way that rendered it subtly but most unequivocally taking and attractive.

Now, as she greeted Colvin Kershaw for the first time a gleam of just that sudden mirth shot from her eyes. He, reading it aright, became alive to the fact that he did not show to his best advantage, rigged out in a suit of her father’s clothes, which was both too long and too wide for him, and, for once in a way, he owned, within his inner self, to a consciousness of feeling ever so slightly disconcerted. But he said quietly:

“Be merciful, Miss De la Rey. At any rate, I am dry and warm after my soaking, for which I feel devoutly grateful.”

The colour rushed into Aletta’s face as a very wave, but the laugh did not go out of her eyes; on the contrary, it intensified in its struggle not to break forth.

“What a thought-reader you are, Mr Kershaw!” she answered. “But, don’t – please don’t think me very rude, but – I’ve – I’ve heard so much about you that – I seem to know you well already – ”

And then the laugh would no longer be kept down. It broke forth in a merry, hearty, silvery peal.

“Aletta!” cried her mother, horror-stricken. “How can you be so rude? What will Mr Kershaw think of you? And when are you going to begin and pour out his coffee for him?”

But, whatever Colvin thought or did not think, there was something so entirely infectious in that laugh that he was joining in it himself with a whole-heartedness which left nothing to be desired; and there was the strange spectacle of two people who had just met for the first time, laughing – as they afterwards put it to each other – like a pair of idiots, one at the other, and that other joining heartily in the joke against himself.

“It’s – it’s all right, Miss De la Rey,” said the latter, when sufficiently recovered to be able to speak coherently. “I am glad to hear you say you seem to know me so well already, because in that case you wilt know that I like nothing better than to be treated as one of the family.”

It was a tactful speech, and the girl looked thoroughly capable of appreciating it. So, too, was her mother, who remarked:

“It’s so good of you to say so, Mr Kershaw. Really, I don’t know what has come over Aletta. They don’t seem to have improved at all in Cape Town.”

Colvin, to himself, opined that they rather had; indeed, exhaustively so, remembering the weird impression of her set up within his mind by the portraits taken before she left for that capital. He knew, however, that the tone in which this reproach was conveyed took the sting out of the words, which, indeed, it clean belied.

“I didn’t know that your eldest daughter was even expected back, Mrs De la Rey,” he said.

“No? Aletta came back rather suddenly, and she has come back with all sorts of notions she had better have left behind. Of course, all our people down there belong to the Bond, and we support the Bond ourselves. Yet politics and war-talk over and over again are not fit subjects for girls.”

“Now, mother, you are far too old-fashioned. I am going to brush you quite up to date,” answered Aletta brightly, but in a sort of caressing tone. “And you must not start Mr Kershaw with a bad opinion of me, like that. It isn’t fair.”

Colvin owned to himself that that would be difficult, inasmuch as he had started with too good a one on sight and his own responsibility. He had been observing her narrowly while he sat there thoroughly enjoying an excellent supper, and already had not failed to notice that she had a soft and perfectly refined voice and pretty ways. Unlike the others, her English was without accent, save for the little tricks of speech by which you may pick out a born Cape Colonist in any crowd, such as clipping the final “r,” or ever so slight a hardening of the vowel at the beginning of the word, and others; tricks of speech which are not unpleasing, and are, moreover, as fully prevalent among children born in the Colony, of emigrated English parents and without a drop of Dutch blood in them.

“But where are the other girls, Mrs De la Rey?” he asked.

“Away. They went to stay with their uncle, Piet Venter, for a few days just before we knew Aletta was coming back. They will be home to-morrow, or as soon as he can bring them.”

“Who is that talking over there?” croaked a feminine voice from a far corner, in Dutch – a voice that sounded both irritable and antique. “It seems like that of an Englishman. Nay – I don’t know what this good land of ours is coming to. The tongue our fathers spoke with before us was good enough for me in my young days. Now everybody must be chattering in English – a tongue only fit for baboons.”

“It is Tant’ Plessis,” said Mrs De la Rey in English and an undertone, “a sort of distant cousin of Stephanus’; I had forgotten she was in the room. She doesn’t say a word for a whole day, sometimes.”

Colvin, who had now finished his meal, went over to the speaker, who was seated in a huge armchair in a dark corner. She was a typical old-time Boer vrouw, large-faced, heavy, and shapeless. She had small eyes, and her thin hair, which, however, was still almost black, was plastered down flat upon her head.

“Daag, Tanta,” (Good-day, Aunt) he said, extending his hand. The old woman stared at him for a moment in a sort of semi-distrustful, semi-resentful way, then touched it with a flabby paw.

“Daag, Neef,” (Good-day, nephew) she replied, then subsided, leaving the other to carry on the conversation – which he did, descanting mainly upon the fine rain which was still falling. She cut him short ruthlessly by calling out:

“Gertruida, who is he?”

Mrs De la Rey, thus invoked, came over to explain.

“Ah, yes. An Englishman! I could have seen that by the way he talks. He does not talk well.”

Colvin, glancing round sedately, caught the flash of mirth which had begun to light up Aletta’s face. He thought there was some fun coming directly.

“Who is he? What is his name?” she went on.

“It’s Mr Kershaw, Tanta,” explained Mrs De la Rey. “He often comes here.”

“I asked what his name was,” shrilled the old woman, bringing the end of her stick down hard upon the floor. “Is it Abram Kershaw, or Izaak Kershaw, or what is it?”

“No, Tanta. It’s Colvin – Colvin Kershaw,” replied that worthy himself, conscious of something between a gurgle and a sob in the direction of Aletta.

“Calvin. Oh, yes. Calvin – Calvinus, that is. You have a good name, nephew. Ja, I have often heard the predikant talk of Calvinus – and preach about him too. Johan was his first name. Ja, he was a good man was Calvinus. He killed a great many Roman Catholics – burnt them all. I have often heard Mynheer say so.”

The gurgling in Aletta’s direction was now becoming convulsive. Colvin himself was inconveniently infected.

“Perhaps you are of his family, nephew,” went on Tant’ Plessis. “His grandson, perhaps? You must be of his family if you have his name. Well, follow in his footsteps – though to be sure there could not be such a good and great man as Calvinus. He burnt ever so many Roman Catholics. I’ve heard Mynheer say so; and if he does not know, who does?”

This was too much. Aletta fairly broke down, and, striving to flee from the room in blind precipitation, was brought up in the doorway by the stalwart and substantial proportions of her father, who was entering, and against whom she collided violently.

“So – so! What fun is on now?” cried Stephanus, at once infected by her mirth. “Aletta, you are a very wicked little girl. You are always laughing. Only wicked little girls always laugh, and at their elders too, I believe. What is it, Tanta? You have been amusing the child?”

This was carrying the war into the enemy’s camp with a vengeance.

“Nee—nee! I have not been amusing anybody,” replied the old lady very testily. “I do not know what girls are coming to in these days – jabbering nothing but English – a tongue only fit for baboons – and laughing at their elders.”

“Softly, softly, Tanta. There is an Englishman here!” expostulated Stephanus, with a wink at Colvin.

“Ja, I know there is,” was the still more testy reply. “But he is not like other Englishmen. His name is Calvin. He is of the family of that good man Calvinus, who burnt ever so many Roman Catholics. He did. Ask Mynheer if he did not. I have heard him say so ever so many times, both in church and out. And he ought to know. I have been telling this Englishman I hoped he would ever remember his grandfather’s example.”

“Let the joke stand, Stephanus,” said Colvin in an undertone. “It’s about the very best I’ve heard for such a long time.”

But the next utterance put forward by this weird old party was destined to prove somewhat less amusing – to the object thereof, at any rate.

“When is this Englishman going to marry Wenlock’s sister?” she blared out, during an interval of profound silence, and talking sublimely past the object of the remark. “When is it to be, Gertruida?”

Poor Mrs De la Rey grew red with confusion.

“What are you saying, Tanta?” she stammered.

“What am I saying? Why, he is engaged to her. Several people have told me. Of course he is. She is the only English girl here, and he is the only Englishman. So of course they are engaged. That settles it.”

“But, Tanta, I assure you I am not engaged to anybody,” struck in Colvin. Coming on the top of his own meditations only that morning the remark jarred on him. Somehow, being made as it was this evening, it more than doubly jarred on him, why, he could not have told then, but he knew afterwards.

“Not engaged to her?” repeated this antique terror. “Then you ought to be. All young men ought to be married as soon as possible; it is a duty they owe to themselves and the community, and you are rather an old young man. Nee, I do not believe you. Your grandfather, the great and good Calvinus, would not have said what was not true; and I have heard this from many people, so it must be true.”

“Well, it is not true, Tanta, however many people say it,” said Colvin, with emphasis, and an unpleasant consciousness of feeling ever so slightly foolish. Aletta, he could see, was in the wildest throes of suppressed mirth, and Stephanus had to flee the room and go and stand out in the pouring rain and laugh till he cried. “I tell you it is absolutely true that I am not engaged to anybody, and am not in the least likely to be.”

“Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself, nephew,” retorted the old woman, whacking the floor with her stick. “What do you suppose the good God gave you health and strength for – ”

“No, this is getting too thick,” said Colvin in an undertone.

“Good-night, Tanta. I want to see Stephanus upon some very important business before he goes to bed. Good-night”; and he made for the door.