“Good,” said Vrouw Prinsloo; “that is the best way out of it. You will soon get sick of the journey, Heer Marais, and we shall see no more of the stinkcat.” Marais rose in a resigned fashion, for he never deigned to argue with Vrouw Prinsloo, who was too many for him, and said: “Farewell, Marie. If I do not return, you will remember my wishes, and my will may be found between the first leaves of our Holy Book. Get up, Klaus, and guide me to your master,” and he administered a somewhat vicious kick to the gorged and prostrate Hottentot. Now Marie, who all this while had stood silent, touched me on the shoulder and said: “Allan, is it well that my father should go alone? Will you not accompany him?” “Of course,” I answered cheerfully; “on such a business there should be two, and some Kaffirs also to carry the man, if he still lives.” Now for the end of the story. As the Hottentot Klaus was too exhausted to move that night, it was arranged that we should start at dawn. Accordingly, I rose before the light, and was just finishing my breakfast when Marie appeared at the wagon in which I slept. I got up to greet her, and, there being no one in sight, we kissed each other several times. “Have done, my heart,” she said, pushing me away. “I come to you from my father, who is sick in his stomach and would see you.” “Which means that I shall have to go after your cousin alone,” I replied with indignant emphasis. She shook her head, and led me to the little shanty in which she slept. Here by the growing light, that entered through the doorway for it had no window, I perceived Marais seated upon a wooden stool with his hands pressed on his middle and groaning. “Good morning, Allan,” he said in a melancholy voice; “I am ill, very ill, something that I have eaten perhaps, or a chill in the stomach, such as often precedes fever or dysentery.” “Perhaps you will get better as you walk, mynheer,” I suggested, for, to tell the truth, I misdoubted me of this chill, and knew that he had eaten nothing but what was quite wholesome. “Walk! God alone knows how I can walk with something gripping my inside like a wagon-maker’s vice. Yet I will try, for it is impossible to leave that poor Hernan to die alone; and if I do not go to seek him, it seems that no one else will.” “Why should not some of my Kaffirs go with Klaus?” I asked. “Allan,” he replied solemnly, “if you were dying in a cave far from help, would you think well of those who sent raw Kaffirs to succour you when they might have come themselves, Kaffirs who certainly would let you die and return with some false story?” “I don’t know what I should think, Heer Marais. But I do know that if _I_ were in that cave and Pereira were in this camp, neither would he come himself, nor so much as send a savage to save _me_.”