“Why much bad luck to come, Hans?” I asked idly, for his naïve summing up of the case interested me in a vague way. “Oh! Baas Allan, for two reasons. First, your reverend father, who made me true Christian, told him so, and a prédicant so good as he, is one down whom the curse of God runs from Heaven like lightning runs down a tree. Well, the Heer Marais was sitting under that tree, and we all know what happens to him who is under a tree when the lightning strikes it. That my first Christian reason. My second black-man reason, about which there can be no mistake, for it has always been true since there was a black man, is that the girl is yours by blood. You saved her life with your blood,” and he pointed to my leg, “and therefore bought her for ever, for blood is more than cattle. Therefore, too, he who would divide her from you brings blood on her and on the other man who tries to steal her, blood, blood! and on himself I know not what.” And he waved his yellow arms, staring up at me with his little black eyes in a way that was most uncanny. “Nonsense!” I said. “Why do you talk such bad words?” “Because they are true words, Baas Allan. Oh, you laugh at the poor Totty; but I had it from my father, and he from his father from generation to generation, amen, and you will see. You will see, as I have seen before now, and as the Heer Marais will see, who, if the great God had not made him mad—for mad he is, baas, as we know, if you Whites don’t—might have lived in his home till he was old, and have had a good son-in-law to bury him in his blanket.” Now I seemed to have had enough of this eerie conversation. Of course it is easy to laugh at natives and their superstitions, but, after a long life of experience, I am bound to admit that they are not always devoid of truth. The native has some kind of sixth sense which the civilised man has lost, or so it seems to me. “Talking of blankets,” I said in order to change the subject, “from whom did you get these karosses?” “From whom? Why, from the Missie, of course, baas. When I heard that you were to sleep in the cart I went to her and borrowed them to cover you. Also, I had forgotten, she gave me a writing for you,” and he felt about, first in his dirty shirt, then under his arm, and finally in his fuzzy hair, from which last hiding place he produced a little bit of paper folded into a pellet. I undid it and read these words, written with a pencil and in French:— “I shall be in the peach orchard half an hour before sunrise. Be there if you would bid me farewell.—M.” “Is there any answer, baas?” asked Hans when I had thrust the note into my pocket. “If so I can take it without being found out.” Then an inspiration seemed to strike him, and he added: “Why do you not take it yourself? The Missie’s window is easy to open, also I am sure she would be pleased to see you.”