The host kept the conversational ball rolling without an effort. Andries was pathetically puzzled; the situation had got beyond him. He was as prejudiced on the Colour Question as are most colonists; in the abstract he hated the idea of sitting at table with coloured people. But on this occasion he felt himself to be completely outclassed in the items of manners and culture; consequently he became acutely embarrassed. However, he appreciated the coffee (he told me afterwards that his own wife, who had a wide reputation as a coffee-maker, could not have made it better) and the bread and honey were delicious. Of whom was it that Mr Hein reminded me? His personality set some familiar chord vibrating. Was it--yes, it was--Parson Primrose; it was he and none other. I tried to extend the parallel. Either of the sons might, at a pitch, have passed for Moses. George? Well,--hardly. Olivia and Sophia?--Oh, well--hm--that was another matter. But at all events there was the dear old Vicar, reincarnated under a yellow skin, in that citadel of loneliness that had a hundred-mile fosse of desert sand and a rampart of all-but-impassible mountains,--that most remote corner of the habitable world. Chamisso was right:-- "Alle menschen sind einander gleich." Next morning I met the "Raad," and we discussed the matter of the flogging. That Raad was a quaint assemblage; surely the most peculiar parliament on earth. It was composed of elderly men, all of a more or less monkeylike physiognomy. Mr Hein took the chair and filled it with the utmost dignity. The members were restrained in manner, temperate in discussion and logical in all they said. Their delivery was pleasing, the rules of debate were strictly observed. Several of the speeches were made in Dutch; those given in the Hottentot tongue were interpreted into Dutch for my benefit. The individual who had received the flogging was present. He was a young married man with a weak chin, a shifty eye and a voluble tongue. His face possessed a certain measure of meretricious good-looks, evidently he was a lady-killer; one of the cheaper varieties of that species. He, an officer of the church, had committed an offence against the moral law. The partner in his guilt was present, looking sufficiently woe-begone. She did not possess the fatal gift of beauty,--at all events according to Caucasian standards. The injured spouse, attired in a goatskin robe, was present and wept softly at intervals throughout the proceedings. She was distinctly less uncomely than the erring sister.