She remarked, as she had done before, that in her judgment Hernan Pereira was “a stinkcat and a sneak,” who had tried to desert them in their trouble, and by the judgment of a just God had got into trouble himself. Personally, she wished that the lion had taken him instead of the worthy Hottentot, although it gave her a higher opinion of lions to conclude that it had not done so, because if it did it thought it would have been poisoned. Well, her view was that it would be just as well to let that traitor lie upon the bed which he had made. Moreover, doubtless by now he was dead, so what was the good of bothering about him? These sentiments appeared to appeal to the Boers, for they remarked: “_Ja_, what is the good?” “Is it right,” asked Marais, “to abandon a comrade in misfortune, one of our own blood?” “_Mein Gott!_” replied Vrouw Prinsloo; “he is no blood of mine, the evil-odoured Portuguee. But I admit he is of yours, Heer Marais, being your sister’s son, so it is evident that you should be the one to go to seek after him.” “That seems to be so, Vrouw Prinsloo,” said Marais in his meditative manner; “yet I must remember that I have Marie to look after.” “Ach! and so had he, too, until he remembered his own skin, and went off with the only horse and all the powder, leaving her and the rest of us to starve. Well, you won’t go, and Prinsloo won’t go, nor my boy either, for I’ll see to that; so Meyer must go.” “_Nein, nein_, good vrouw,” answered Meyer, “I have those children that are left to me to consider.” “Then,” exclaimed Vrouw Prinsloo triumphantly, “nobody will go, so let us forget this stinkcat, as he forgot us.” “Does it seem right,” asked Marais again, “that a Christian man should be left to starve in the wilderness?” and he looked at me. “Tell me, Heer Marais,” I remarked, answering the look, “why should I of all people go to look for the Heer Pereira, one who has not dealt too well with me?” “I do not know, Allan. Yet the Book tells us to turn the other cheek and to forget injuries. Still, it is for you to judge, remembering that we must answer for all things at the last day, and not for me. I only know that were I your age and not burdened with a daughter to watch over, _I_ should go.” “Why should you talk to me thus?” I asked with indignation. “Why do you not go yourself, seeing that I am quite ready to look after Marie?” (Here the Vrouw Prinsloo and the other Boers tittered.) “And why do you not address your remarks to these other _heeren_ instead of to me, seeing that they are the friends and trek-companions of your nephew?” At this point the male Prinsloos and Meyer found that they had business elsewhere. “It is for you to judge, yet remember, Allan, that it is an awful thing to appear before our Maker with the blood of a fellow creature upon our hands. But if you and these other hard-hearted men will not go, I at my age, and weak as I am with all that I have suffered, will go myself.”