The rising of De Wet had stirred him not. That was a foolishness. Had not the _predikant_ explained that Dutch slimness had given them the country back these eight years past. Louis Botha had very properly settled _his_ goose, and the _trek_ into German South-west Africa and Namaqualand was right. The German had no business there at all, _Oud_ Brand had always said so. He knew what Germans were, he had known the old Legion men whom the English had settled on the land after that Crimean War of theirs—pretty settlers they were. Look at that Colonel Schermbrücker, bah! _Verdomde Kerbs_ every one. But now—a dreadful story had come up from Philippolis. Folk said that Afrikanders were going to Europe to help the English in this mad war of theirs. So old Schwartz was sore perplexed, as well he might be, and Julie, his wife, was away to town to _Nachtmaal_, the monthly Communion; an old body too, as years went, near thirty years his junior, and his third wife forby; and wise withal. In the _Zit-kammer_ hung a huge gold frame, and in the frame an illuminated border, and within the border a big black coffin, and round the coffin the names of the wives and the children who had died. The names were many, for the Boers bear more than they rear; the little cemetery above the dam had many little graves. Beneath the golden frame stood a table, and on it an old faded wool-worked cloth, and on the table stood the great family Bible in Dutch, the volume of the Sacred Law in all its glory, and therein were written the names of all the wives and all the children of Gabriel Schwartzberg and his wives, and the names were more numerous than those of the golden frame. Eleven sons and three daughters still survived. And the last were the entries of Julie Armand Duplessis, his last wife, and her sons, of whom two survived. In the sacred volume also stood the names of Gabriel Hermanus Schwartzberg, born 1798, and Marie Duplooy, his wife, born 1802 and married in 1820, and of _his_ father, Gabriel Petrus Schwartzberg, born 1760, and of his wife, Flavie Terblanche, married in 1782.