A long, deep-drawn, hissing breath, and again that brooding silence, while the moonlight played for an instant on the silver tongue waiting in the mesmerised space for its brief repast. Along a knotted, spikey branch Pietris Vanhiever crouched, grasping in his hand a naked, long-bladed knife; his sinewy arm, on which the dark swollen veins stood out like cords, was stretched so as to give full play to a swift and sudden blow. His teeth bared in hungry expectation, every nerve strained in eager listening, he waited for the fulfilment of his vow, and the satisfaction of that passion of jealousy, which, after his two days of absolute bodily starvation, dominated his half-caste being to the extinction of every other feeling. Presently there came within the ken of his hungry spirit a muffled regular sound drawing rapidly nearer--without doubt the footfall of a horse on the soft sand. His black eyes gleamed under their heavy brows with a sombre fire, and gripping the branch more closely, he swung his arm once, twice, backwards and downwards, then drew it close to the branch again and waited. ‘Loppety, loppety, loppety’ came the swing of that peculiar three-legged canter that was steadily and virtuously making for the Englishman the first stage of that route that should put his little girl--his own property--for ever out of the reach of such swine as Pietris Vanhiever. ‘That _he_, forsooth--_he_--good Lord! it’s almost comic--certainly quite impossible!--Yes, this big _Kopje’s_ the first landmark--shall see the camp fire from the other side--unless the lazy hogs have let it out--hallo’.... The silent scream of the thirsty knife backwards and downwards, the hollow groan, the soft thump of the body on the sand, the frightened snort and sudden wheeling of the riderless horse, the hiss and dart of the destroyer on his prey--these things are written in the dumb records of the giant and changeless tree. The sound of the grey’s hoofs fleeing back in the direction from whence he had come had faded away before Pietris raised himself from the body of his enemy.