"Here again--`Were anything to befall you--were you never to come back to me my heart would be broken...' As the paper is folded it has cut through the word `heart'--And--by Jove, this is more than a coincidence! Here again, it has gone clean through the same word. Look at the end. `_I want you in all your dangers and hardships to have, with you, these poor little lines, coming, as they are, warm from my hand and heart_'... And now for the photograph. It is a sweetly lifelike representation of you, my dearest--" A cry from her interrupted him. The portrait was a three parts length cabinet one, cut round to enable it to fit the box, which it did exactly. Right through the breast of the portrait, the assegai point had pierced. "O Eustace--this is an oracle, indeed!" she cried. "Do you not see? The spear point has gone right through my `heart' again for the third time. My dearest love, thrice has my `heart' stood between you and death--once in the portrait, twice in the letter. At the same time it has obliterated the word `curse.' It is, indeed, an `oracle' and--What if I had never given you that box at all?" "I should be a lot of dry bones scattered about the _veldt_ in Bomvanaland at this moment," he rejoined. "Now you see how your love has twice stood between me and death; has preserved my life for itself. My sweet guardian angel, does not that look as if some Fate had always intended us for each other from the very first!" CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT. AT SWAANEPOEL'S HOEK. Several months had gone by. The war was nearly over now. Struck on all sides--decimated by the terrible breech-loading weapons of the whites--harried even in their wildest strongholds, their supplies running low, their crops destroyed, and winter upon them--the insurgent tribes recognised that they were irretrievably worsted. They had no heart for further fighting--their principal thought now was to make the best terms they could for themselves. So all along the frontier the disheartened savages were flocking in to lay down their arms and surrender. Those who belonged to independent tribes in the Transkei were treated as belligerents--and after being disarmed were located at such places as the Government thought fit. Those who were British subjects, and whose locations were within the colonial boundaries, such as the Gaikas, Hlambis, and a section of the Tembus, were treated as rebels and lodged in gaol until such time as it should please the authorities to put them on their trial for high treason, treason, felony, or sedition, according to their rank, responsibilities, or deeds. Still the unfortunate barbarians preferred to discount the chances of the future against present starvation--and continued to come in, in swarms. The gaols were soon crammed to overflowing; so, too, were the supplementary buildings hired for the emergency.