“Johanna Meyer,” answered someone mechanically, for they did not seem to have taken the trouble to look at me. As I listened to those words my heart, which had stood still waiting for the answer, beat again with a sudden bound that I could hear in the silence. I looked up. There, advancing from the doorway of one of the houses, very slowly, as though overpowered by weakness, and leading by the hand a mere skeleton of a child, who was chewing some leaves, I saw—I saw _Marie Marais!_ She was wasted to nothing, but I could not mistake her eyes, those great soft eyes that had grown so unnaturally large in the white, thin face. She too saw me and stared for one moment. Then, loosing the child, she cast up her hands, through which the sunlight shone as through parchment, and slowly sank to the ground. “She has gone, too,” said one of the men in an indifferent voice. “I thought she would not last another day.” Now for the first time the man at the head of the grave turned. Lifting his hand, he pointed to me, whereon the other two men turned also. “God above us!” he said in a choked voice, “at last I am quite mad. Look! there stands the _spook_ of young Allan, the son of the English prédicant who lived near Cradock.” As soon as I heard the voice I knew the speaker. “Oh, Mynheer Marais!” I cried, “I am no ghost, I am Allan himself come to save you.” Marais made no answer; he seemed bewildered. But one of the men cried out crazily: “How can you save us, youngster, unless you are ready to be eaten? Don’t you see, we starve, we starve!” “I have wagons and food,” I answered. “Allemachte! Henri,” exclaimed the man, with a wild laugh, “do you hear what your English _spook_ says? He says that he has wagons and _food, food, food!_” Then Marais burst into tears and flung himself upon my breast, nearly knocking me down. I wrenched myself free of him and ran to Marie, who was lying face upwards on the ground. She seemed to hear my step, for her eyes opened and she struggled to a sitting posture. “Is it really you, Allan, or do I dream?” she murmured. “It is I, it is I,” I answered, lifting her to her feet, for she seemed to weigh no more than a child. Her head fell upon my shoulder, and she too began to weep. Still holding her, I turned to the men and said: “Why do you starve when there is game all about?” and I pointed to two fat elands strolling among the trees not more than a hundred and fifty yards away. “Can we kill game with stones?” asked one of them, “we whose powder was all burnt a month ago. Those buck,” he added, with a wild laugh, “come here to mock us every morning; but they will not walk into our pitfalls. They know them too well, and we have no strength to dig others.”