Who could have thought that within a little time it would be but a field of blood, that those wagons would be riddled with assegais, and that the women and children who were moving there must most of them lie upon the veld mutilated corpses dreadful to behold? Alas! the Boers, always impatient of authority and confident that their own individual judgment was the best, did not obey their commandant’s order to keep together. They went off this way and that, to shoot the game which was then so plentiful, leaving their families almost without protection. Thus the Zulus found and slew them. Presently as I rode forward a little apart from the others someone overtook me, and I saw that it was Henri Marais. “Well, Allan,” he said, “so God has given you to me for a son-in-law. Who would have thought it? You do not look to me like a new-married man, for that marriage is not natural when the bridegroom rides off and leaves the bride of an hour. Perhaps you will never be really married after all, for God, Who gives sons-in-law, can also take them away, especially when He was not asked for them. Ah!” he went on, lapsing into French, as was his wont when moved, “_qui vivra verra! qui vivra verra!_” Then, shouting this excellent but obvious proverb at the top of his voice, he struck his horse with the butt of his gun, and galloped away before I could answer him. At that moment I hated Henri Marais as I had never hated anyone before, not even his nephew Hernan. Almost did I ride to the commandant to complain of him, but reflecting to myself, first that he was undoubtedly half mad, and therefore not responsible for his actions, and secondly that he was better here with us than in the same camp with my wife, I gave up the idea. Yet alas! it is the half-mad who are the most dangerous of lunatics. Hans, who had observed this scene and overheard all Marais’s talk, and who also knew the state of the case well enough, sidled his horse alongside of me, and whispered in a wheedling voice: “Baas, I think the old baas is _kransick_ and not safe. He looks like one who is going to harm someone. Now, baas, suppose I let my gun off by accident; you know we coloured people are very careless with guns! The Heer Marais would never be troubled with any more fancies, and you and the Missie Marie and all of us would be safer. Also, _you_ could not be blamed, nor could I, for who can help an accident? Guns will go off sometimes, baas, when you don’t want them to.” “Get out,” I answered. Yet if Hans’s gun had chanced to “go off,” I believe it might have saved a multitude of lives! CHAPTER XVIII. THE TREATY