“The Vrouw Prinsloo wishes to ask my husband certain questions about his property here and what is to be done while he and her men are away at the main camp for the second trial, as I, whose heart is full of sorrow, have no head for such things. Also the Hottentot must have orders as to where he is to get a horse to ride with him, so pray let us pass, mynheer.” “Very good; it is no affair of ours, Vrouw Quatermain— Stay, I suppose that you have no arms under that long cloak of yours.” “Search me, if you will, mynheer,” she answered, opening the cloak, whereon, after a quick glance, he nodded and bade them enter, saying: “Mind, you are to come out by ten o’clock. You must not pass the night in that house, or we shall have the little Englishman oversleeping himself in the morning.” Then they entered and found me seated at a table preparing notes for my defence and setting down the heads of the facts of my relations with Pereira, Dingaan, and the late Commandant Retief. Here I may state that my condition at the time was not one of fear, but rather of burning indignation. Indeed, I had not the slightest doubt but that when my case was re-tried before the great council, I should be able to establish my complete innocence of the abominable charges that had been brought against me. Therefore it came about that when Marie suggested that I should try to escape, I begged her almost roughly not to mention such a thing again. “Run away!” I said. “Why, that would be to confess myself guilty, for only the guilty run away. What I want is to have all this business thrashed out and that devil Pereira exposed.” “But, Allan,” said Marie, “how if you should never live to have it thrashed out? How if you should be shot first?” Then she rose, and having looked to see that the shutter-board was fast in the little window-place and the curtain that she had made of sacking drawn over it, returned and whispered: “Hans here has heard a horrible tale, Allan. Tell it to the baas, Hans.” So while Vrouw Prinsloo, in order to deceive any prying eyes if such by chance could see us, busied herself with lighting a fire on the hearth in the second room on which to warm the food, Hans told his story much as it has already been set out. I listened to it with growing incredulity. The thing seemed to me impossible. Either Hans was deceived or lying, the latter probably, for well I knew the Hottentot powers of imagination. Or perhaps he was drunk; indeed, he smelt of liquor, of which I was aware he could carry a great quantity without outward signs of intoxication. “I cannot believe it,” I said when he had finished. “Even if Pereira is such a fiend, as is possible, would Henri Marais, your father—who, at any rate, has always been a good and God-fearing man—consent to work such a crime upon his daughter’s husband, though he does dislike him?” “My father is not what he was, Allan,” said Marie. “Sometimes I think that his brain has gone.”