"I can write no more, and Heaven knows when we may meet again. I shall make for Natal, of course, with as much as I can save out of the wreck-- that is, as much as the enemy will let me carry off. Perhaps, though, that will be nothing; and I must be content with getting away with our lives, for I hear that the blacks are getting uneasy, as if they smelt blood; and Heaven knows what may happen if they break out, for the white man is their natural enemy in their eyes, and, friends now, they may be our foes to-morrow. "God bless and protect you, my boy! Aunt Jenny's dear love to you, and she is going to help me to hold Bob in, for the young dog is mad to come after you. "Your father, in the dear old home he is about to quit, perhaps for ever. "John Moray. "_PS_:--Good news, my boy. Joeboy has just come back, in full fighting fig. He will bring this, and some provision for a day or two. I feel sure you may trust him. He has been showing me what he would do to any one who tried to hurt young Boss Val. He is like a big child; but he is true as steel. Good-bye. "Heaven be with you, my boy!" That last line was in Aunt Jenny's handwriting, and there were big blotches on the paper where the ink had run, and over them came a few lines in Bob's clumsy hand: "Val, old chap, the dad says I'm not to come along with Joeboy to join. I told him it was a shame, for I felt in a passion, and he knocked me down. "That's only my larks. He did knock me down, but not with his fist or the handle of a--I don't know how you spell it; but I mean chambock. He knocked me over with what he said. He told me it was my duty to stop and help him and auntie. He might want me to fight for him and her. If he does, I'll shove in two cartridges--I mean only one bullet; and I don't care if the old rifle kicks till she breaks my collar-bone. I mean to let the Boers have it for coming and upsetting us. I never knew how nice dear old home was before. Old--" That was the bottom of the paper; but upon turning it over, there at the very top on the other side, and in the left-hand corner above the word "Val," where my father had begun, was the word "Beasts," which I had passed over unnoticed as being part of some memorandum on the paper when my father took it up hurriedly to write. I always was a weak, emotional sort of fellow--perhaps it was due to the climate, and my having had the fever when we first came there--and the writing looked very dim and blurry before my eyes; and yet I felt inclined to laugh over what Bob had scribbled. I did laugh when my eyes grew clear again, for Bob had, apparently at the last, taken up the pen to write along the edge of the paper, and so badly that it was hard to read: "I say, Joeboy looks fizzing. He's been oiling himself over to make him go easy, and sharpening his saygays with the scythe-rubber."