“Ishmael, or Smith, or Ibubesi—whichever name you may prefer,” he broke out, “do not lie to me about your servant, for now I know all the truth, which I refused to believe when my daughter and Nonha told it me. You are a black-hearted villain. But yesterday you dared to come and ask Rachel to marry you, and now I find that you are living—oh! I cannot say it, it makes me ashamed of my race. Listen to me, sir. If ever you dare to set foot in Ramah again, or to speak to my wife and daughter, the Kaffirs shall whip you off the place. Indeed,” he added, shaking his sjambok in Ishmael’s face, “although I am an older man than you are, were it not for my office I would give you the thrashing you deserve.” At first Ishmael had shrunk beneath this torrent of invective, but the threat of violence roused his fierce nature. His face grew evil, and his long black hair and beard bristled with wrath. “You had best get out of this, you prayer-snuffling old humbug,” he said savagely, “for if you stop much longer I will make you sing another tune. We have sea-cow whips here, too, and you shall learn what a hiding means, such a hiding that your own family won’t know you, if you live to get back to them. Look here, I offered to marry your daughter on the square, and I meant what I said. I’d have got rid of all this black baggage, and she should have been the only one. Well, I’ll marry her yet, only now she’ll just take her place with the others. We are all one flesh and blood, black and white, ain’t we? I have often heard you preach it. So what will she have to complain of?” he sneered. “She can go and hoe mealies like the rest.” As this brutal talk fell upon his ears Mr. Dove’s reason departed from him entirely. After all, he was an English gentleman first, and a clergyman afterwards; also he loved his daughter, and to hear her spoken of like this was intolerable to him, as it would have been to any father. Lifting the sjambok he cut Ishmael across the mouth so sharply that the blood came from his lips, then suddenly remembering that this deed would probably mean his death, stood still awaiting the issue. As it chanced it did not, for the man, like most brutes and bullies, was a coward, as Rachel had already found out. Obeying his first impulse he sprang at the clergyman with an oath, then seeing that his two guides, who carried assegais, had ranged themselves beside him, checked himself, for he feared lest those spears should pierce his heart. “You are in my house,” he said, wiping the blood from his beard, “and an old man, so I can’t kill you as I would anyone else. But you have made me your enemy now, you fool, and others can. I have protected you so far for your daughter’s sake, but I won’t do it any longer. You think of that when your time comes.”