"We'll wipe out that score--you and I--pretty thoroughly. It's come to a point now where I shall be able to help. It won't do for you to follow him, because, plainly, he'll be expecting you. He'll be on the look out. I don't know whether you've got a plan, but I have. We won't follow him... He shall follow me." She chuckled wickedly. "I've always had an idea I should elope with old Karl... You go back to Cape Town, Grit, and leave this to me. When I've got him safely in tow, I'll communicate with you, and you can drop down on us and finish him, if necessary." Lawless regarded her earnestly. "How will you get on his trail?" he asked. She smiled significantly. "I'm going to turn up in the same town; then, if I know anything of him, the pursuit will be all on his side. You must give me a cheque for something killing in the way of a trousseau... I'll manage the rest." He appeared not altogether pleased with the arrangement. "You'll overplay the part," he objected. "You trust me," she answered confidently. "Besides, he doesn't carry the letters on him... He boasted this morning that they were safely out of reach." She turned round from the glass to stare at him. "Then what's the good--Well, in any case," she finished, in the manner of one who clinches an argument, "there's got to be a settlement over that bashed face of yours." CHAPTER TWENTY ONE. Late that afternoon, with their scant belongings, Lawless and his companion drove into Stellenbosch in the broken-springed buggy which, after much persuasion, they had induced the owner of the farm to which the Zulu woman had led them to hire out to them. The difficulty had arisen, not from disinclination to oblige a stranger, but on account of having no spare hand to act as driver. In the end the farmer drove them himself, not because he could best spare the time, but because he knew he was least likely to waste it. He and a small son of the house harnessed the horse, while Lawless looked on, and Tottie waited in the shade of the stoep where the farmer's wife sewed, and eyed her askance, responding distantly to her tentatives towards conversation. Afterwards she observed to her husband: "I was glad you gave in over the buggy. It was a relief when that woman was out of sight. One could have grown a crop of mealies in the dirt on her face, only nothing so wholesome could thrive in such rubbish. I didn't see her left hand because she kept her gloves on; but if there was a wedding-ring on every finger, I'd know she wasn't married to that man. It's one of those cases one recognises by instinct." "The man's no good either," the farmer answered... "Been fighting-- unless he drinks, and she mauled him like that when he couldn't defend himself. She looks capable of it... She's fond of him too. Did you notice how she helped him into the cart, seeing he was a bit sick?"