We did work hard to make that place the home it grew to. "It's for you, boys," he said, "when I'm dead and gone;" and it was about that time I began to think and understand more fully how father was doing it all for the sake of us boys, and to try and ease his heart-ache. Aunt Jenny set me thinking by her words, and at last I fully grasped how it all was. "I believe he'd have died broken-hearted, Val," she said to me, "if I hadn't come to him. It was after your poor dear mother passed away. I told him he was not acting like a man and a father to give up like that, and it roused him; and one day--you remember, it was when I had come to keep house for him--he turned to me and said, `I shall never be happy in England again; and I've been thinking it would be a good thing to take those boys out to the Cape and settle there. They'll grow up well and strong in the new land, and I shall try to make a home for them yonder.' `Yes, John,' I said, `that's the very thing you ought to do.' `Ah,' he said, `but it means leaving you behind, Jenny, dear, and you'll perhaps never set eyes upon them again.' `Oh, yes, I shall, John,' I said, `for I've come to stay.' `What!' he cried; `would you go with us, sis?' `Yes,' I said, `to the very end of the world.' So we came here, Val, where there's plenty of room, and no neighbours to find fault with our ways." That's how it was; and now I can admire and think of how Aunt Jenny, the prim maiden lady, gave up all her own old ways to set to and work and drudge for us all, living in a wagon and then in a tent, and smiling pleasantly at the trees we planted, and bringing us lunch where we were working away, dragging down stones for the house which progressed so slowly, though father's ideas wore modest. "For," said he, "we'll build one big stone room, Val, and make it into two with part of the tent. Then by-and-by we'll build another room against it, and then another and another till we get it into a house." Yes, it was hard work getting the stones, and we were busy enough one day in the hot sunshine, about a month after the wagon had been with the trees and stores, when Bob suddenly stood shading his eyes, and cried: "Some one's coming!" We looked up, and there, far in the distance, I saw a black figure striding along under a great, broad matting-hat. "Why, it looks like that great Kaffir, father," I said. "Nonsense, boy," he replied; "the Kaffirs all look alike at a distance." "But it is, father," I cried excitedly. "Look; he's waving his big hat because he sees us." I waved mine in answer; and directly after he began to run, coming up laughing merrily, and ending by throwing down three assagais and the bundle he carried, as he cried: "Come back, boss."