It may be wondered that I did not run absolutely wild in such surroundings, but I was held back from this by my father’s society. He was one of the gentlest and most refined men that I ever met; even the most savage Kaffir loved him, and his influence was a very good one for me. He used to call himself one of the world’s failures. Would that there were more such failures. Every morning when his work was done he would take his prayer-book and, sitting on the little stoep or verandah of our station, would read the evening psalms to himself. Sometimes there was not light enough for this, but it made no difference, he knew them all by heart. When he had finished he would look out across the cultivated lands where the mission Kaffirs had their huts. But I knew it was not these he saw, but rather the grey English church, and the graves ranged side by side before the yew near the wicket gate. It was there on the stoep that he died. He had not been well, and one evening I was talking to him, and his mind went back to Oxfordshire and my mother. He spoke of her a good deal, saying that she had never been out of his mind for a single day during all these years, and that he rejoiced to think he was drawing near that land whither she had gone. Then he asked me if I remembered the night when Squire Carson came into the study at the vicarage, and told him that his wife had run away, and that he was going to change his name and bury himself in some remote land. I answered that I remembered it perfectly. “I wonder where he went to,” said my father, “and if he and his daughter Stella are still alive. Well, well! I shall never meet them again. But life is a strange thing, Allan, and you may. If you ever do, give them my kind love.” After that I left him. We had been suffering more than usual from the depredations of the Kaffir thieves, who stole our sheep at night, and, as I had done before, and not without success, I determined to watch the kraal and see if I could catch them. Indeed, it was from this habit of mine of watching at night that I first got my native name of Macumazahn, which may be roughly translated as “he who sleeps with one eye open.” So I took my rifle and rose to go. But he called me to him and kissed me on the forehead, saying, “God bless you, Allan! I hope that you will think of your old father sometimes, and that you will lead a good and happy life.” I remember that I did not much like his tone at the time, but set it down to an attack of low spirits, to which he grew very subject as the years went on. I went down to the kraal and watched till within an hour of sunrise; then, as no thieves appeared, returned to the station. As I came near I was astonished to see a figure sitting in my father’s chair. At first I thought it must be a drunken Kaffir, then that my father had fallen asleep there. And so he had,—for he was dead! CHAPTER II. THE FIRE-FIGHT