"This yer exper'ence happened to me away back 'fore you younkers wore shoes--but I never told it, as I were afraid of skeering the wits outer you. That's so. The Little Kleinemonde over yonder were a blind river, same as now, with a stretch of beach about 200 yards wide 'tween its lip and the sea-foam hissing along the hard sands where the little tumble-crabs swarm in their shells, and the air comes bubbling up outer the sea-worm's holes. It were more lonely than now--for there's town families as picnic there for weeks in their tents--and you can hear the little children laugh--and sometimes see a string of girls holding hands and jumping up in the foam. There was never a soul then on the wide, white beach, that stretched away miles east and west--with black rocks running out into the breakers--and back of the beach the high white sandhills, rimmed on the top with thick berry bushes. It were that lonely that sometimes I could have a run away, and the birds that flitted along, hunting for what the tide cast up--the oyster catcher and the curlew made it lonelier with their wild cries. And the river lay back, still and quiet, without a current--between the dark woods--quiet and still--crouching down behind the stretch of beach sand--as if it feared the roaring surf--always tossing and thundering jest across that narrow riband. And the waves came always rushing in, as though they would like to wash away the sand strip and pour their waters over the silent river--and in the spring tides I seed the outermost fringe of foam sweep a'most up to the lip of the river--and go back and come up again--swinging to and fro--till sometimes a little trickle of the salt water would fall into the dead stream, where a many fishes gathered, hoping to get out at last into the great wild waters. I caught fish there at them times--going into ten pounds--springers and steinbrasse. Well, one day there came a great storm of rain--like a cloudburst--and every cattle track and footpath were a running stream--and every river bed were filled to the brim. And in the night I yeard the thunder of the waves at the fall of the spring tide. My! How they roared through the night--and crashed as the big waves curled over and smote the water with the blow of a falling rock. The night were that wild that I could get no sleep--and went to the door to look out. The ground was wet and steaming, and the sound of running water came from every dip and hollow. I sed to myself the dead river will be alive, and the tide and flood will cut a passage deep and wide through the beach, and there will be a litter heaped along the tide mark all down the beach, with good pickings for the first man. So I put a sack over my head, and taking the old muzzle-loader, stepped out into the slushy dark, and squelched away over the sodden veld towards the Kleinemonde. I struck the ridge above the river jest about sunrise, and the light coming through the mist showed