Gabriel Jacobus Schwartzberg was a _voortrekker_ in the sense that, a baby in arms, he had rumbled up in the great oxwain, with his father, old Gabriel Hermanus (he being long known as young Garvie, pronounced ‘Harvie’), had seen the republic grow and wane and come again. He had brought a secret commando across from the Free State to help Piet Cronje crush the _roineks_ at Potchefstroom, and as a young man had fired his father’s old _roei_ into Harry Smith’s force at Boomplaatz—and perhaps shot the ensign who lies in his tombstoned grave there. Therefore an old implacable he was, ‘a stout ould Pratestant’ like the Ulster man, if ever there was one. The Great Boer War had seen him too old save to ride transport, but ridden he had and then hidden in the Gnaadeberg till the republics had gone down in sorrow, and he for the time had cursed the God of David for forsaking His chosen; till one day a slim _predikant_ had explained that the Lord worked in wondrous ways, and that they had already got the country back from the _verdomde roineks_. It was easy enough so to describe what everyone in England, since party politics are dead, has recognised as an act of statesmanship; and the _predikant_ wanted fifty sheep as a contribution to his new manse. So old Schwartz took heart of grace, and, finding that no _roineks_ came his way, sat in the _stoep_ in the sun, smoking away the remaining years that God gave him, his sun-dried old eyes peering out across the shimmer of the veldt, his rifle by his side, and the volume of the Sacred Law on a table, for it is so the old Dutch wait their end, rich in years and in inheritance, as the Lord has promised. And in the year of grace 1915 it was far, far past the threescore years and ten. Yet had it not turned to sorrow and tears. Daily did old Schwartz ride round his estate by the _vlei_, where the springbok dwelt, and over the _bult_ to Bessie’s Dam, where his son lived hidden from view, and back by _Saltpan_, past his own oxen to his own old house at _Sweetfontein_, the sweet spring that old Hermanus had found and built beside, with Marie, his wife, and little Garvie, his son, far back in the ages, as time is counted in South Africa. But now in his old, old age great trouble had come on old Schwartz, and he sat long o’ days in the _stoep_ peering out into the shimmer. The Great War in Europe was nothing to him. At ninety-two, be one never so hale, kings may rise and fall, and wars may come and go, and leave ninety-two sitting in the _stoep_.