'Marinus,' I said, 'isn't it awful--this horrible clean paint and these little tin sheds in the old garden? Oh, Marinus, _do_ let us scrape this tiny bit of latch, just to peep at the lovely brass beneath! And let us pretend we are putting back the old cupboards, and coffers, and china, and let us burn all that'--with my eye on sheets of neat military maps and deal tables. But Marinus, with the fear of God and of the King, pushed me rudely past a Georgian fireplace into a large room with a big open chimney. Over the grate, let into the wood, I saw the most ridiculous old painting--like a piece of ancient sampler in paint instead of silk--an absurd tree with an impossible bird on a bough, and beneath it a terraced wall with some animals like peacocks, with the _paysage_ background _à la_ Noah's ark, but slightly less accurate. 'There is a superstitious story about that picture,' said Marinus. 'They say some treasure was hidden in the thick wooden screen over the chimney, and the picture was gummed over it. The story goes that whoever should touch this picture, or attempt to remove it, would die shortly afterwards. It may be that the curse, or a bit of it, landed on the old, stamped brass screen which was taken to Groote Schuur, shortly before Rhodes died. But no one would want this horror, would they?' This story made me love the chintz picture, and, after all, the colours were good; it was antique; it was old; and there was treasure behind it! Above this room are Anne Barnard's apartments, where she came to live when the Secretary of State, Melville, gave 'the prettiest appointment in the world for any young fellow'--the Secretaryship to the Governor of the Cape--to Lady Anne's husband in 1797. She had to write Melville several letters before she got this appointment. 'To pay me all you have owed and still owe me, you _never can_--but what you can you should do, and you have got before you the pleasure of obliging me,' she wrote. There is stuff for a novel in this sentence. The last appeal, 'You owe me some happiness, in truth you do,' brought this pretty appointment with a salary of £3,500 a year. I looked out of a window of her room, which opened on to a small balcony, and conjured up the procession she saw the day after she landed--the taking of the oath of allegiance to King George III., the crowd trooping in through the yellow-bricked gateway, clattering over the cobble-stones, every man with his hat off (an old Dutch regulation on entering the Castle on a public occasion). 'Well-fed, rosy-cheeked men, well-powdered and dressed in black! "Boers" from the country, farmers and settlers, in blue cloth jackets and trousers and very large flat hats, with a Hottentot slave slinking behind, each carrying his master's umbrella, a red handkerchief round his head, and a piece of leather round his waist comprising his toilette.'