removing the jacket or outer skirt they have worn during the day, sleep without further dismantling. The grandmother, a young married daughter and her husband, and some of the younger children often occupy one room, while the parents, with perhaps a grown-up son and several children, occupy another. As the windows are not made so that they may be opened, but are built fast in the frames, even in cold weather the need for much covering is not felt, but in hot weather the chambers become leaden and heavy to an extent which drives all sleep from the eyes of one unaccustomed to the atmosphere; and the stranger sometimes tosses about, wrestling all night without attempting to disrobe or sleep, and is glad when about four, or a little earlier, there are sounds of stirring in the house, and all arise.[51] [51] Travelling in the north of the Colony along the banks of the Orange in our childhood, we were once compelled to pass the night in the house of a very wealthy farmer. At bedtime we were shown into a room with three bedsteads. In one slept the father, mother, and the young infant, in another the grandmother and two of the younger children; in a large four-poster in the other corner were two girls of fourteen and sixteen and a youth of nineteen. On this bed we were asked to lie down, and about one o'clock our company was added to by a huge Boer bull-dog, which lay at the foot, and successfully, even for a child, prevented sleep. In the front room, as we enter, we find the father already up, leaning over the half-door with the pipe in his mouth to scan the darkness; the Kaffir maid has come and made fire in the kitchen, you can hear the crackling of the wood in the large room, and the eldest daughter slips out of her chamber and takes the tallow candle from the table to go to the back and make coffee. Presently the house-mother and the younger children, the last still without their jackets and dresses, come in and sit about the room, some holding their vel-schoens sleepily in their hands. Through the top of the open door you can see a streak of grey dawnlight along the far-off horizon and by the time the coffee comes it is almost light in the room; the tallow candle is blown out, and, except in the dark corner, you can see all the faces. When you have drunk your coffee you go out; the Kaffir boy has brought your horses round from the kraal, where they have been all night; if there are mealies or forage your hospitable host may have had them fed, and when you have shaken hands with each member of the household, and thanked the master and mistress for their hospitality, for which they would be pained if you offered any recompense, you ride away. By the time the sun rises, you are half a mile across the plain, and the farm-house is beginning to grow small behind you as you look back from your saddle.[52] [52] See Note D, _The Domestic Life of the Boer_.