"It matters the hull sackful. Look at me--I've never been to England, but all the same it's my home. I love the ole flag, and cry `Hurrah' for the Queen; an', ole as I am, I'd boost anybody over the head as 'ud up an' say England was not the best and the biggest and the grandest country in the world. Yessir!" "She's not very big, Abe." "Soh! Well, she's big enough to spread her arms all round the yearth, and fetch anybody on the other side `ker-blum' with a man-o'-war's big gun. We give her all--it ain't much, maybe--an' we get back a crop of suspicions. That's why I ask, is the people in the Ole Land white?" "We are all of one family, Abe, and relations don't compliment each other." "Who's crying out for compliments? I leave 'em to the chaps over in England, who praise each other to their face in the halls, and tell each other what fine fellows they are to save the Kaffirs from them cruel, savageous colonists. May the Lord look up and down 'em for the mischief they've done." "You seem very bitter, Abe." "Well, the reading in that paper has lef a bitter taste. You see, sonny, I recomember the wars of the `thirties' and the `forties,' when your father were a boy--and his uncles and brothers, and sisters and wives--the whole lot of us--were raw to the land--when the country all round were wild--and the Kaffirs hangin' on the frontier like a great dark wave way out on the sea--ready to rush in and sweep us offern the land. Three times they rushed in--three times we had to leave our homes, our flocks, our crops, and make for the posts. Then we had to fight 'em back, and those people away over in England each time 'ud fetch a howl that reached across the sea about the cruelty of the colonists--with never a word about the burnt houses, and the cattle swept off, and the women and children. "Look here, sonny," said Abe, his face growing dark; "I'll tell you somethin' I seed when I was a grown boy--somethin' about one of these very wars the people at home have blamed us for making for our own gain. "The Kaffirs were over yonder; about twenty miles away across the Chumie, and the farmers were scattered all about, thinkin' of nothin' at all but the mealie crop, and the wheat nearly ripe, and the pumpkin patches--for they had been through hard times, and the season were good. Jes' away back of this place, where the three springs of the Kleinemonde rise out of the flats, there were a little valley no bigger'n ten acres, set around with small hills, and the water runnin' through and round it under big yellerwood and Kaffir plum trees; while in the water stood clumps of palmeit and tree ferns, yeller and green, and rustlin' to the wind. Beyond the hills the grass veld rolled away to the Fish River bush, over here towards the Kaffirs, and the Kowie bush 'way back. On the grass veld were a many herd of bucks--springbok and blesbok--while in the thick bush were koodoo and buffel--ay, an' elephant!