"It's the horned beasts that you think of--well, why not? they're meat and drink and a roof over your head. A few there were who saved their herds, but the bulk were swept in the net of the robbers. There was not a many human fish caught in that net that time, 'cept old Dave Harkins, an' his five sons who fell all in one spot by Palmiet Fontein fighting to the last grain o' powder, and ole Sam Parkes. Poor ole Sam. He found religion, did ole Sam, and many the day I've a-harkened to him holdin' forth on his stoep, where he would sit for the rheumatism kep' him from moving. Well, ole Sam, when they told him that he must fly, he said, `Lift my chair to the stoep. The Kaffirs will not harm me.' They placed him there with his face to the east, and there the Kaffirs found him. I passed the house the next day, and he was leanin' back lookin' so peaceful that I hailed him. But he were dead, sonny, with a gash in his heart. Ay, they struck him as he sat, but they left the house standing and when I peeped in at the window there was the table set with all the chiney in the house. The Kaffirs did that One on 'em had been about a white man's house, and he showed his friends how the white man prepared his table. A little one's vanity and the blood dropping from the assegai." "What were you doing all this time, Uncle Abe?" "Shiverin' and hidin', sonny; for a party on 'em swooped down on my place led by a thunderin' ole thief I had once lammed with a sjambok for stealin' my sugar. There was a fine bedstead in the house and a whole shelf o' crockery, for I had some idees then of marryin', and, blow me, if they didn't smash the lot, besides breaking all the winders and burning the thatched roof. Then they killed an ox, a fine _rooi bonte_, roasted him whole, and ate him--by gosh. After that they slept with their bellies full! Yes, they did that; slep' with me a watching 'em from an ant bear hole. I nearly spiflicated 'em, but somehow I didn't. Then they moved off all but three, including that ole thief, which gathered my cows an heifers an' calves an' oxen together, and druv 'em off. 'Twas like partin' with my heart strings, and I followed 'em up. That evenin' I druv the lot inter the big kloof." "You recaptured them?" "I s'pose so, sonny!" "And the three Kaffirs?"