"You will learn all," said Eleanor, "in the packet I have left for you with my father. I leave it to you to decide whether we may meet again." The light of day was fading. Side by side, they returned towards the house; but not a word did either speak. They went round by the vineyard; they stood at the gateway leading to the trellised passage. Frankfort opened it, and Eleanor would have passed him by. He drew her back. "Shall we meet again, Eleanor?" said he. "Alas!" she answered, "I fear _you_ will decide otherwise." And he--his _heart_ answered her in the spirit, if not in the words, of Moore's beautiful song: "I know not and care not if guilt's in that heart, I but know that I love thee, whatever thou art!" Ah, reader! you will be glad to know, for I cannot help telling you, that Eleanor, though _disgraced_, was not _guilty_, save in the act, and that I do not defend, of marrying one for whom she had no real affection. The inmates of Annerley have retired to their rest. The whole household seems hushed in the deepest repose; but Frankfort is seated with a packet before him, which he longs, yet dreads, to open. He tears the seal away, and the sight of Eleanor Lyle's handwriting makes his heart beat--he can hear it in the silence of the midnight hour. But we must first see how sped the convicts. CHAPTER ELEVEN. THE TORTURE. It was in the month of December, 18--, that Lee and Martin Gray established themselves as traders at Umlala's kraal, in Kafirland. The reader has been given to understand that Lee had no intention of domesticating himself with the savages, albeit he adapted himself at once to the customs of the tribe, persuading the chief and his councillors that he had been induced to join them from a desire to better his condition, as well as aid and advise them in their plans and operations against the colony. He was too well acquainted with the Kafir character to attempt to impose on them by professing disinterested motives, for on these he knew they would place no reliance; but by fixing himself as a trader among them, he could in the first place bide his time for carrying out his intentions of joining the Dutch; and while doing so, lay up a fund for future pecuniary wants or emergencies. To Brennard it was his interest to be a faithful agent. To do Lee justice, he had no thought of fraud in money matters, and from the traders to the eastward he easily gathered intelligence of the Dutch farmers' movements, from the districts of Natal, and beyond the Draakberg, to an appointed spot between the branches of the Orange River, where a general gathering of emigrant Boers was to take place previous to treking in a body to Orichstad, a settlement beyond the 25th degree of south latitude, and therefore considered by them as not subject to the British Government.