As he re-read the old story of the wanderings of the Israelites in the Wilderness--they scarcely knew whither--the trials and hardships they had encountered--it seemed to him that the Sacred Book was telling the story of the "Great Trek" of his own people. The Boers, too, had wandered forth--had suffered hardship and injustice no less than had the patriarchs of old--he told himself. Closing the book, he folded his hands, and, leaning comfortably back in his armchair, he gazed far across the grassy sweep of high veldt, with its red-brown scattered kopjes, towards the western horizon. Soon he was lost in the memories of a century. Softly the room door opened. In a twinkling Petrus' arms were flung around the old man's neck. "A penny for your thoughts, Grandfather dear! Please let me stay here with you a while," begged the boy. "Ah, Koos, is it you, my boy? Yes, yes, you may stay a while if you do not ask too many questions. It is easy to guess your thoughts. Let me try. Your visit with Aunt Kotie at Johannesburg next week. Your trip to Cape Town with Lieutenant Wortley and George. Hurrying back home in time for Christmas. Isn't that right, Koos?" "Yes, Grandfather, and George is expecting a big Christmas box from his Aunt Edith in England. Now for yours!" "I should have to take you back to the early days in the Old Colony, Koos, when I was but a boy like yourself. And, like you, I used to beg my old grandfather for 'stories' of his country, which was France. He was one of several hundred French Huguenots who fled from their own country to South Africa, because they could not worship as they liked. Those were happy days in the Old Colony there on our large, quiet farms, before British rule became intolerable. Our people were prosperous slave-holders. My father owned as many as eighty Hottentots. But as British oppression became more and more intolerable--our slaves liberated, and indignities of every kind heaped upon us--our Boer leaders resolved to endure no more and the great 'Exodus'--known in history as the 'Great Trek of 1836'--began. I shall never forget those awful days. I was just a boy then." "Why didn't the Boers rebel?" indignantly questioned Petrus.