Wild Honey—Part II. (continued 3)

“My friends are waiting for me at Tuli.”

“Yes,” she said.

“I cannot break faith with them.”

“No.” Her mouth was twisted like the mouth of a tortured child, but her eyes remained bright and dry.

Carden’s faithless heart smote him.

“For God’s sake, Frances—” he muttered, taking her hands. “I will stay if you wish it”—But his heart was already away with his friends and the waiting miles beyond. She read the truth in his eyes. No word now of her coming with him! Only of his staying—if she wished it!

She looked into his eyes a long aching moment, then turned away with one word:

“Good-bye.”

A few hours later all was as it had been at the Grey farm. Even the cart was gone, for Swartz had brought four sturdy mules and driven it away. Under the lone tree Xsosa, the baboon, sat silent, watching the kopjes with fierce wistful eyes. Silence everywhere, except in one room of the house whence came the sound as of a woman softly and brokenly weeping.

Once some Kaffir words spoken savagely yet with a kind of crooning tenderness came through an open window.

“See you now what you have got from watching the road!—a knife in your heart. Did not old Grietje warn you? Hush arme kindje—weep not.”

But the soft and broken weeping went on.

Across the arid flats of Bechuanaland went Carden with company picked for its excellence in fair weather or foul; but sometimes on the fairest, fullest day a pang of loneliness would shoot through him, darkening his mental horizon and isolating him from his fellows. The Forest of Somabula gave splendid sport, but in its deep silences he sometimes thought he could hear the sound of a woman weeping. And all the water sweeping down the violet black precipices of Victoria Falls and twirling lazily in the subtle olive green pool below could not wash out the remembrance of a mouth that was twisted like the mouth of a little tortured child. But his conscience had great sleeping qualities. Also, he had not been using his will for ten years to fight and “down” other men without strengthening its sinews for his own service. He willed not to remember certain things, therefore in time will knocked memory out, or at least put it into Chancery where it could no longer hurt him until he released it, or it proved strong enough to release itself.

After that the trip was as complete a success for him, as it had been from the beginning to the others.

Everything favoured them. Sport was extraordinarily good, boys reliable, mules and oxen in fine condition, weather unfailingly serene. The objective point of the trip was Lake Rudolph in British East Africa, via British Central and German territory. The route had been picked and pored over long before the start and nothing intervened to spoil the original plans. With an almost uncanny smoothness the days unclosed, rolled themselves out, and closed again, full to the brim with event and adventure, leaving no spare moment in which to remember the life left hundreds of miles behind; thereafter swiftly transforming themselves into weeks and months, until more than half the year was done.

Then one lovely moonlight night on the shore of Lake Bangwelo memory without comprehensible rhyme or reason came out of Chancery and stayed with Carden. And thereafter it came regularly. Will had no power over it any longer. Like a little spectral child that was afraid to be out alone it came oftenest when the moon was sinking and the dawn only an hour or two off. Nearly always its lips were twisted with pain, and on dark nights he could hear it softly weeping. But there were nights when it was not a sad ghost and these were hardest to bear. Sometimes it threw a soft warm arm round his throat and woke him very tenderly because the dawn was near and he must go. At other times it would leave a kiss fresh as a flower across his lips and he would fling out his arms and wake with a curse to find them empty. But always in some wise or another the little ghost kept vigil with him.

Then slowly, little by little, he began to hate things, and things repaid him as they always do, by going wrong. Boys began to run away when they were most needed, donkeys took to dying (the ox-waggons had long been left behind), carriers got fever and died, and those engaged in their place ofttimes scooted leaving packs by the wayside. Big game, after long tracking, escaped though wounded, in the end. One of the other fellows went down with malaria and passed out. The rest of them grew morose and sick of the whole business. Some of them began to talk of the affairs that awaited their attention down-country. But Carden meant to bring back a white rhino from the shores of the Rudolph and he said so, though God knew that he too was sick of the business. Not a night now that he did not lie down with maledictions in his heart; not a morning when he rose to a world glittering with frost crystals that looked as though they had been shaken from some giant Christmas card (everywhere except on the dark spots where sleepers had lain) but his first thought was to curse the day he was born and jibe at every good thing life had bestowed on him.

The year was two months short of completion when the other men began to drop off. Le Breton and Senier took a dozen boys and walked for Mozambique. Vincent was dead. Talfourd, the last to go, joined at Tabora another man who was making his way to Daar-es-Saalem. Carden was left alone with his determination to finish at Lake Rudolph or die in the attempt. The determination was undermined at nights by a spectre which whispered him alluring invitations to embark at Mombassa for the Cape and thence from Petersburg to take the Tuli road. But by day he was far from the intention of doing anything of the kind, though after being away nearly a year and a half he had very good reasons for hastening his return. Occasional batches of letters that reached him at prearranged posts notified an urgency for his presence on the Rand, but it had grown to be a matter almost of defiance now that he should make Rudolph, though who or what it was he defied he omitted to specify, even to himself.

And he did make Rudolph though it took him three months to do it and another three months to get back. When he arrived at Mombassa with his white rhino trophies, he was looking a good deal the worse for wear, and it may be computed that his system contained more than one man’s fair share of malarial and tropical trypanosomes. But he was once more immune to spectral memories at least and so far master of his destiny as to be able with a firm mind to arrange his affairs down south by letter and cable and take ship for Europe instead of the Cape. Via the East Coast he reached Egypt and made a month’s stay; then to Marseilles and several months loitering on the Mediterranean shores. But his objective point now was Ireland and by land and water he came at last to that fair, green land. For one of the conclusions he had arrived at during the lonely later months of his expedition was that man was not meant to live alone and that the hour had struck for him to find the beautiful, accomplished, and well-born girl who doubtless awaited him somewhere in his own country. Ireland indeed is the home of many such, and in and out of Dublin during a specially gay dancing and hunting season he found no scarcity of the usual supply. But none were for him. Always, even in the most charming, something lacked, some little, vital, essential thing—he knew not what, and did not wish to analyse, and never stayed to find out. Once or twice, when he lingered in curiosity, the keys of his castle were almost out of his hands, for the dark face of Dark Carden had not lost its lure for women, and many a beautiful eye grew brighter for his coming and more than one society beauty made up her mind that it would be “rather good fun” to go to South Africa as this adventurer’s bride. But Carden escaped always, and with a sense of breathlessness and relief that was extraordinary considering the nature of his quest.

Then one bleak morning in late autumn the nostalgia of Africa took him by the heart and before that day was out he was shaking the dust of Ireland from his feet with his face set for Southampton where the Union-Castle liners turn their noses towards the Southern Cross.

One of the first faces to greet him at the Cape Town Docks was Talfourd’s. Carden fell upon him as upon a long-lost brother. It seemed to him there was no other man in the world he would so gladly have met. He was conscious that Tal and he shared an experience that was secret to the rest of his friends. Wherefore he could not disguise his pleasure at the encounter. Tal was hooked in to come and lunch at the City Club, and later to dine at the Mount Nelson. For the moment there was no one like Tal. The latter indeed found himself somewhat intrigued by this unwonted demonstrativeness. Carden seemed to him to be queerly changed since first they had met some five or six years past. When after dinner that night, out among the trim walks and aromatic bushes of the garden, they fell into reminiscences he voiced something of his thought. He was an introspective fellow with a good deal of sentiment in his composition, and the wine and cigars had been excellent.

“You were always a hard nut to crack, Carden, but the gayest chap on earth, and even the fellows you knocked out liked you for it afterwards. But Africa changed you as it changes us all. You went queer on that trek of ours up north and I never could make it out. I’ve thought a lot about it and, do you know, I always dated the change in you back to that little farm we put up at on the road to Tuli—Greis-Kopje—remember the place?”

Carden gloomed at him. Did he remember it? By God!

“Strange,” continued Talfourd, “I ran into our old driver Swartz at Pretoria the other day. He has got regular work on the Zeederburg Coach Line, and is up and down the Tuli Road. He told me a queer thing about Greis-Kopje. It appears that old de Beer, the fellow who owned the place, disappeared about a year ago and has never been seen since. He was the husband of that pretty girl we thought was his daughter at first. You remember?”

Carden was busy lighting another cigar, his face mask-like except for the eyes which burnt like points of blue fire.

“The supposition is that either he was drowned crossing the Crocodile River or else a stray lion got him.”

“And Mrs de Beer?”

“Still lives on there with old Grietje and Yacop.”

“Let’s go in,” said Carden abruptly. “I have to be up at daybreak and get through a lot of business. I leave by the mail at eleven.”

“What a fellow you are! Where for? Johannesburg?”

“Yes.” And from thence to the Tuli Road, fast as hoof and wheel could carry him. Now he knew what ailed him, and would shout it from the mountain-tops but that it was too sweet and dear a secret to be shared with all the world—yet. Now he knew what anodyne to seek for healing of his raging wound, what drink for solace of his burning torment. By the broad, dusty road to Tuli ran a stream of clear, cold water and his parched soul was sick to drink from it. Memory suddenly sculptured in his brain a face that all Ireland had not been able to duplicate. Yet all Ireland lay in the dewy, passionate eyes of Frances de Beer, and for him all home, all peace, all future. Now, at last, he acknowledged what he had always known, and gave himself up to the thought of what he had denied so long: she who had given all asked nothing, and let him go without a reproach. He knew now that he had been a knave and a fool and that for the last two and a half years he had been paying with torment of body and soul for it. And still was paying. When he remembered her and all she had been to him—his loneliness was a still small torment that pierced and tortured him like a dart in his vitals.

Throughout that night he paced his room, or stood at his open window, staring out at the silvered slopes of Table Mountain but getting no peace of her stern eternal loveliness. Pacing, and staring, in the small hours, he went over every detail of that brief sweet-madness on the Tuli Road, remembering her face, her voice, her eyes, and the soul of her that had leaped from them to him. And, as always, the thing that stirred him most was the memory of her fluttering hand under his that first night when they sat on the stoep listening to Talfourd’s singing. He remembered how a mist had come over his eyes at the feel of it; his heart had seemed to turn over in his breast; it was as though he had trapped something he had lain in wait for all his life; all the tyranny and tenderness of his nature had been roused in that moment, with something of a boy’s elation when he has caught with his own hands some beautiful wild thing that he has watched for long.

It all came back, like a dream of delirium, only more vividly. He re-lived the moment when a passing chivalrous impulse had bade him kiss her hands and leave her, and that dark hour on the veld when he had fought a battle with his baser self and lost. Then that other mad hour of stolen sweetness, when he had groped for her in the luminous darkness of her room and found first the little, pale, strong hands that smelled like apple blossom—then her lips! He recalled her tears and little broken cries, and how his lips had crushed them down and kissed them away! How all too soon the dawn had come! And with this memory came pain and shame. Bitter shame that he had so debased her whom he loved. She who had only wished to do right, but found her heart and his will too strong for her. Love anointed his cynical eyes at last and he saw and understood the hearts of women as he had never done before, and knew at last how unworthy were most men, and he with them, of the sacrifices women make on the altar of love. Hot, unaccustomed moisture that seemed to be dragged torturingly from the very depths of his being seared his eyes. He flung himself on his bed, ashamed at first of his tears, then of his acts, and, at last, ashamed of his life.

“God forgive me!” he thought. “It shall never happen again.”

But God’s forgiveness was taken for granted and he thought less about that than of the sweetness the future promised.

It was not many nights before his feet were set upon the long white dusty road that wound by kop and kloof and vlei to the haven of his heart’s desire. He had given orders for everything he possessed on the Rand to be sold, and did not mean to return to the Golden City. Waggons were being fitted up and provisioned in Pretoria for his use, and would follow him. For the veld was to be his home now once and for all. He was sick of money-making, politics, and all the little games and intrigues of finance, of artificial women, and conventions. He meant to have done with these things and forget on the brown, kind breast of Mother Africa that he had ever known them.

And she was coming with him; the one woman who fitted into the wild places his soul loved; the woman with dreams of stretching plains and forests in her eyes. Ah! that was a woman with whom to seek the blue mountains, to camp under the stars and forget cities and sins! It was well that old de Beer had disappeared, for Dark Carden meant to take what was his own at last, and swore that all the de Beers in the world, dead or alive, should not prevent him. He was ready to defy Heaven and Hell to prevent him.

His cart drew near the line of grey kopjes at the end of a long day’s run. From his outspan the distance was too great for any but his own keen eyes to distinguish the little ramshackle farm.

Everything was as it had been nearly two and a half years before. The dust lay thick on the sage-green bush, and once more a blood-red sun was sinking to rest behind the horizon of massed scarlet and bronze. No one had mended the broken-down kraal, and on a far off rise a figure that might have been Yacop was picking up dried cow-dung. There was something very like the smell of roasting coffee on the air.

Carden was glad to be alive with a fierce gladness. He felt a boy again, and looked it, as he strode across the sunburnt grass. Yes! there was Grietje crouching by the fire. And a white gown flickered on the stoep as long ago it had flickered a signal to his heart. She was waiting for him there, as he had always known that she would be waiting.

The baboon barked furiously as he approached. It was not chained to the tree any longer, but to a post by the side of the house. At the sound of the creature’s hoarse voice the old woman by the fire rose up. She did not speak when she saw that it was Carden, only looked at him with strange little old eyes, dark as the unexplored depths of a secret well. When he had passed she stood a moment gazing after him, then shuffled silently away to the back of the house.

He went forward to the stoep and slowly mounted the crumbling stone steps. The old woman’s gaze had vaguely disturbed him. Or was it something in the motionless silence of the woman who sat gravely observing him, that chilled the riot of his veins?

She wore her little sunbonnet cappie as of old, her face so far back in it that nothing could be seen but two great eyes. It seemed strange to him that she did not rise, nor put out her hand in welcome. Only sat there observing him sombrely.

“Frances,” he said gently, “I have come back.”

She sighed. After a moment she spoke from her cappie. But it was not a voice that he remembered at all.

“You should not have done that, Dark Carden.”

He stood very still. It seemed as if something ice cold had entered his breast and was slowly approaching his heart. His voice jerked a little when he spoke again, very humbly.

“I should have come long ago.”

“Yes; you should have come long ago.” There was something relentless and fateful in the sound of that voice, so soft and stern. “Now, it is too late.”

“No,” he said violently. “It is not. I have come to take you away and never let you go again. I cannot do without you any longer.”

She gave one of her strange terrible sighs, and spite of his firm words he felt the cold thing creep a little nearer to his heart.

“Where is your husband, Frances?” God knew what made him ask. He cared little enough for the whereabouts of old de Beer. Yet the answer was extraordinarily disconcerting.

“He is over there.” She made a gesture and he jerked his head round abruptly. There was nothing to be seen in the direction her hand had indicated. Nothing but the lonely tree. He looked at her piercingly then, with a new inquiry in his glance, and a creeping, clutching fear for her mind.

“I heard that he was dead,” he said slowly.

“Yes, it is true. He is dead,” she answered quietly, looking past him to where she had pointed. Spite of himself he looked once more in the same direction. Again nothing but the tree.

But something else arrested his eye. Grietje had come back and was squatting by the fire, and at her side, playing in the dust, was the toddling dumpy figure of a little child. It must have come round with Grietje from the back of the house. Certainly it had not been there before.

“Whose child is that?” he asked in surprise. And the stern, still voice from the sunbonnet answered him:

“It is your child and mine.”

“My God!”

After a long time he said again, brokenly, with bitter self-accusation.

“My God! Frances, forgive me! I did not know. How was I to know?”

She did not answer.

“Can you ever forgive me?”

“Yes, as I hope for forgiveness,” she said.

There was a dull solemnity in her tone and she did not touch the hand he stretched out. Unobserved by him the little toddling child had come up and now flung itself against its mother’s knees hiding its face in her lap. It swung a little sunbonnet in its hand and by the fading light he could see the softly curling hair, black as his own, and the outline of a small tender face. He knew that her child and his could not but be beautiful, and stood staring there, trembling, the magic of fatherhood on him and an urgent longing to catch the little creature in his arms. Suddenly it turned to him, and in the same moment the mother raised a pale, warning finger and laid it across her lips in token that he must be silent. So he did not cry out at what he saw.

The little face that promised such flower-like beauty had been transformed into a thing of horror by a piece of diabolically clever tattooing. A monstrous purple and red spider sprawled its bloated form and lobster-like claws upon the delicate rose-leaf skin. Neither tarantula nor octopus, it possessed all the worst attributes of each. It’s puffed-out body crouched in the centre of the face upon the nose and cheek bones, and the child’s bright violet eyes seemed the staring strange eyes of the beast. Its claws sprayed and curled about the mouth, reached out to the ears, and lost themselves in tendrils of hair upon the forehead! The thing seemed too hideous in conception to be the work of anyone but a mad devil, yet there was in it some sinister suggestion of human hands.

Carden knew not what supernatural or other power kept him there, staring with agonised eyes at the face of his child, when his every instinct was to turn and run as he had never run from anything in his life. The child broke the spell by dancing away with a pretty elfin laugh to rejoin Grietje by the fire. The quality of her laugh and the light patter of her feet brought home to Carden the realisation that it was a girl whose beauty had been thus cruelly destroyed forever, and a groan broke from him. The woman watching him with her tragic eyes saw sweat standing in little beads on his lips.

“He did it,” she said. “That is why he lies dead over there” Her eyes travelled past Carden once more to where the lonely tree waved an arm in the evening breeze.

“He did not come back for eleven months after you had passed,” she continued in her sad relentless voice. “My baby was here when he returned—so of course he knew. But he said nothing. I feared terribly for the child at first, but in the end I came to think that he did not care. Then, one day, when my fears were all asleep, he disappeared, taking my baby with him for three days. Grietje and I roamed the veld seeking them, and on the night of the third day as we drew near home again we heard the child crying, and coming in we found it with its lovely little face all swollen and black from the poisons he had put in. He was lying on the bench laughing, and called out to me as I came in:

“‘There is your love child. But she will have to do without love.’”

“I was worn out with weeping and wandering for three days and nights, but when he said those words I rushed over to him and killed him. I killed him with these hands.” She looked down on the hands lying on her lap.

“I tore his throat open and his life ran out with his blood,” she said softly.

Carden had no words. He stood looking at the little pale strong hands that were used to smell of apple blossom, and listening like a man in a dream. But it was a bad dream. A nightmare that would haunt him for the rest of his days! He was not sure now that those days would be many, that his life too was not passing with every word spoken by that gentle, fateful voice.

“Grietje and I buried him over there under the tree. No one else knows but Xsosa who watched us at the burying in the dead of night.”

Darkness had suddenly enfolded the land. No stars brightened the vapouring gloom but occasionally the fire threw out a blood-red finger showing Grietje cuddling the child to her bosom, crooning some Kaffir lullaby over its head.

“What is to be done,” muttered Carden, in the voice of a man who has come to the end of all ways. He looked at her, but her face was, as ever, hidden in the cappie. He had not seen it once in all this terrible hour and now he knew he would never see it.

“What is there to do?” she said sombrely. “Grietje and I must stay here, with him, until we grow old and die.”

“But... the child?”

“Ah!” She sighed her deep sigh. “She will grow up perhaps—and in her turn watch the road.”

Chapter Five.

The Mollmeit of the Mountain.

(Dutch for mad woman or witch.)

When the number of coloured pupils attending the Friend for Little Children School reached one hundred and fifty, it was decided that Sister Joanna ought to have the assistance of a white pupil-teacher as well as the three half-caste young girls she had already trained. The several High-Dutch ladies of Brandersberg who interested themselves in Sister Joanna’s good work, both by collecting subscriptions for it abroad and helping to place the young girls in domestic service after they had left school, determined to advertise in the Free State newspapers for a girl who would not only teach in the school, but also live with Sister Joanna at the school cottage, and help with the simple domestic arrangements. For Sister Joanna kept no servant; she would have considered it extravagant to do so while she had health and strength; besides, she had lived so long in the Colony that there was nothing in the way of domestic and everyday housework she was not able for. She was a good cook, could make her own soap, smoke her own legs of mutton, and grow her own vegetables. She had a neat little garden round the cottage (which stood some hundred and fifty yards from the school), and a corner of it was devoted to herbs, for she was deeply learned in the science of herbal healing, and could cure a headache, a varicose vein, a black eye, or supply you with a sleeping draught that would make you forget you had ever known neuralgia; all out of one little corner of her garden. Besides this, she managed with great skill and discipline the large school of coloured boys and girls which she had started herself with half a dozen children, some fifteen or sixteen years before; and yet found time to tend the sick, harass the lazy, and manage the affairs generally of everyone in the native Location. However, though she would not admit it, she was beginning to look old and worn, and it was certainly a good idea to get someone to help her in her busy life.

The advertisement brought several answers, but none of them so satisfactory as that of a young Bloemhof girl called Mary Russel. Mary it seemed had not only received a good education and passed her “Matric” (a rather unusual thing in a girl of seventeen), but being the eldest of a large and not at all wealthy family was also extremely domesticated. The Brandersberg ladies thought well of her letter of application, and better still of Mary herself when she arrived, pretty and fresh and kind, with a firm mouth and a courageous glance in her grey eyes. Though of English extraction she was colonial born, a further qualification for the place, for Colonials though kind and just do not spoil natives by making too much of them as English people are apt to do. No sooner was Mary Russel installed than she became a great favourite with the children, and the Brandersberg ladies feeling that they had done well by so popular a character as Sister Joanna thereafter turned their attention to their own affairs. The large and flourishing town of Brandersberg lay within the shadow of a mighty berg that in any other country would be called a mountain, and that even in Africa was considered worthy of a title. Thaba Inkosisan it was called, and when the sun set, its great jagged shadow was flung far across the veld, just missing Brandersberg, but falling full and black upon the native Location; and this was considered a curious and sinister thing by the coloured population, for it was upon their village and in their hearts that the mountain had cast sorrow and fear.

The Friend for Little Children School was close at the foot of the berg, and a road ran direct from it to the Location, so that the children could go to and fro between their homes and the school without approaching the Dutch town; and perhaps this was one of the reasons why Sister Joanna’s work was as popular with the whites as with the natives, for in the Free State the whites did not care for their children to mix with the natives, and any arrangement to keep the two races apart was greatly favoured. But the situation of the school was a cause of inquietude amongst the coloured parents; not because it was too far from the town, but because it was too near the berg. For Thaba Inkosisan was haunted by a mollmeit, and a mollmeit is no friend to little children.

The haunting of the mountain dated from many years back. When Mary Russel heard the story, she knew that the horrible tragedy in which it originated must have occurred about the time she was born, for it was in that year that the Basutoes fought in the Free State, surrounding and putting many a town into a state of siege. Brandersberg had been among the beleaguered towns, and the inhabitants of several farms near by had been put to the assegai by the fierce Basuto warriors.

Now, on the other side of the mountain, about thirty miles from the town, there had stood a little stone farmhouse which an old Boer had built with an eye to defence in case of war. Its windows were small and high, its doors and shutters of iron, and there was nothing inflammable anywhere in its outer structure. When the Boer died, the place was bought by an Englishman with a pretty wife and little daughter. Just before the trouble with the Basutoes, another woman came to supplement the little family, a certain Janet Fink, middle-aged, well-educated, and recently arrived in Africa on an emigrant ship. She had been engaged by an agent at the Cape to come to the farm as a sort of combined nursery governess and mother’s Help. The people of Brandersberg who knew the Englishman and his wife and liked them, had not had time to make the acquaintance of the Help before the war with the natives broke out and the town went into laager. Unfortunately this family was one of those cut off from the town. The Englishman had indeed been warned, but he pooh-poohed the idea of war, or only heeded it enough to postpone going in as usual to the town to get the monthly supply of provisions. But eventually supplies ran so low that he was obliged one day to set forth after giving careful instructions for the defence of the farm in case of attack. He had, however, delayed too long, and on his way into the town he was met by the Basutoes out for killing, and put to the assegai. A contingent of the main impi then went to the farmhouse and tried to take it, but the women had seen them coming, and received them so resolutely, and with such well-aimed shots from the high windows that having more important things on hand than the taking of two women they presently proceeded on their way, leaving two men behind with instructions to watch the house and kill the women if possible; if not, to starve them out. Being well informed (as Kaffirs always are at such times), they were aware that though there was water in the house there was no meat or meal to speak of, and that the little garrison could not hold out for more than a few days. It held out, however, for ten days, during which time smoke went up every morning from the chimney, and whenever the Basutoes made a feint of approaching they were received with rifle fire. On the eleventh day, however, there was no smoke, and towards evening the two Basutoes feeling pretty sure of their prey crept close, meaning to try for the chimney. Within ten yards of the house one of them was picked off with a bullet through his head, and the other turning to ran got a shot in his leg that put him out of business, but in spite of which he managed to crawl away into the bush, where a day or two later he was found by a troop of Dutch Artillery. Under the lash of the sjambok he was induced to tell all he knew about the farmhouse, and the Dutchmen, at length convinced that the place was not an ambush but really contained the two white women and child, rode up to it and found, not what they expected, but many surprising things. First of all, instead of signs of famine there was every evidence that many meals had been eaten; plates with remains of meat and gravy were scattered about, and a saucepan contained the leavings of a stew that had been curried and flavoured with onions. Plainly fuel had given out, for every wooden thing in the scantily furnished kitchen had been chopped up and burned. The Boers were deeply puzzled until in an adjoining room the body of the farmer’s wife was found lying in a corner covered with old sacks. She had been dead for many days, and the manner of her dying was swift and sudden; there was a knife deeply imbedded in her back. When later the charred skull and thigh bones of a little child were raked out of the ashes in the fireplace the dark tragedy was made clearer still, and the rough men turned from the scene with sick hearts and grim mouths. There were husbands and fathers amongst them, and it would have gone hard with her if in that hour they had come across the mother’s Help who in so hideous a fashion had helped herself. But they never found her. Whether after escaping from the house she was caught and killed by the Basutoes, or, lost in the bush had been eaten by wild beasts, or wandering on had reached some town and under an assumed name told a plausible tale and been taken in and cared for, had never been discovered. Only, presently in some strange way a story got about that she had fled to Thaba Inkosisan, and was living there in a cave, subsisting on wild roots and rock rabbits.

The tale first got credence among others besides the natives on the disappearance from some transport waggons outspanned near the mountain of a little Kaffir child. It was declared by the Kaffirs that the “flesh-eating woman” from the farm had turned into a mollmeit with cravings for human flesh, and that the children of Brandersberg would never be safe again while she lived in the mountain. Mollmeits, according to them, were like tigers which having once tasted human blood find no other so much to their liking; and, though other food must of needs be eaten, the evil craving comes upon them at times like a madness and must be satisfied. Most of the Dutch people scoffed at this ghoulish tale, saying that it was more likely that the Kaffir child had fallen down a ravine, and thereafter been eaten by jackals. But some there were who believed in the mollmeit theory, and spoke of searching the mountain. However, the idea came to nothing. There are too many little piccaninnies in Africa for one more or less to make any difference except to its mother; and the sorrows of a Kaffir woman do not count for much in some parts of the world. Moreover, the searching of Thaba Inkosisan was not an affair to be lightly undertaken; its sides were steep and rough, with great inaccessible cliffs in some parts, and masses of bush growing thick and close as moss. There were known to be caves too, and cracks and fissures that led far into the mountainside; but the notion of anyone living in such places seemed to the Dutch impracticable and ridiculous. At any rate, nothing was done, and with the passing of months and years, the legend of the mollmeit had almost died out when another child disappeared—a little orphan this time, whom no one missed at first because it was no one’s business to look after her; thus some days passed before her loss was realised and then it seemed rather late to make more than a perfunctory search, for if she was lost in the bush (and it must be remembered that the bush grows right up to the outskirts of many South African towns) she was probably already dead from starvation or sunstroke. A search was made in a half-hearted sort of way, and mainly because Sister Joanna agitated for it; but no one bothered for long about a little half-caste orphan child. Besides, the coloured people, whom the matter mostly concerned, said that it was no use looking for what was already eaten and digested up in the caves of Thaba Inkosisan; which clearly showed what their solution of the problem was.

It was long before the mollmeit was heard of again. True, the superstitious and fearful tried to make out that little Anna Blaine, the youngest of a large coloured family, had fallen a victim to the witch; but to all sensible people it was plain that the child had been drowned at the Sunday-school picnic. She was not missed until the children got home, and then it was remembered that when last seen she was throwing stones into the spruit swollen with recent rains near whose banks the picnic had been held. Sister Joanna, with whom the child had been a special favourite, worried the police until they consented to drag the spruit for some six miles; but the body was never recovered.

The fourth disappearance created more stir than any of the others. For one thing it was the fourth, and when four children have mysteriously disappeared within the space of fourteen years it is time to be up and doing, said both the Dutch and the coloured population of Brandersberg. Further, it was no orphan or unwanted child this time, but Susie Brown, the pet child of a highly respectable coloured carpenter. The little thing had started for school one morning, and had just simply never arrived. From the time she set out, an hour late, on the long empty road that skirted the foot of the berg no one had seen her. It was as though some great aasvogel had swooped down from the skies and carried her off. Indeed some people were inclined to think this the answer to the riddle. Possibly, they said, a great bird of prey had its nest in a secret place of the mountain, and fed its young thus! At any rate it was time for the mountain to be searched and the mystery made an end of. And the mountain was searched, from end to end, by a large band of men. It is true that all the inner crevices could not be explored, nor the highest cliffs, but the searchers were satisfied if others were not, that neither monstrous bird nor human monster occupied Thaba Inkosisan.

So again with the passing of years, the weird legend died away, and at the time of Mary Russel’s coming to the school it was almost forgotten, except by loving mothers who warned their children to keep as far away from the mountain as possible, and the children themselves who never wearied of embroidering and embellishing the fearsome tale, handing it on to one another, and sometimes frightening a timid child into a fit with it.

Mary one day in the schoolyard came upon a little group who having finished their tiffin were seated in a ring listening with scared eyes and parted lips to the story (with variations and improvements) of Susie Brown’s disappearance.

”—And the mollmeit chose her because she had such nice, fat, round arms and legs... just like Rosalie Paton’s there,” announced the historian, and a chubby pale-brown maiden of five gave a howl of terror. Mary sat down and took the child in her arms, roundly scolding the story-teller while she cuddled the soft fuzzy head against her breast. For it must not be supposed that these little coloured children are not just as sweet and pretty and attractive as white children. Hardly any of the inhabitants of the Brandersberg native Location were real negroes. The negro races mostly live in kraals far from the towns, speaking no language but that of their tribe, and being classed under the general heading of “Kaffirs.” The scholars of the Friend for Little Children School were mostly the offspring of pale-brown people—“Cape folks” who have long hair and Malay blood in them, and natives of Saint Helena, who are also long-haired, but rather dusky; some were of Koranna or Hottentot breed (and these were not beautiful), but many were the children of mixed marriages between “poor whites” and Cape natives, and these were nearly always pretty and charming-looking. The language used generally amongst themselves was a kind of Low-Dutch patois, but all spoke English well, and were taught in that language.

Little Rosalie Paton’s mother was a Cape woman, and a very disreputable one, the drunkard of the village, in fact; but it was probable that the child’s father was a white man, for except for the fuzziness of her long black hair and the brilliance of her great dark eyes, she was as like a pretty little white child as she could be.

When Mary had thoroughly scolded the children for talking about the mollmeit, she carried the still weeping Rosalie with her up to the cottage and her own room there. A little petting soon dispersed the tears, and then Mary produced her trinket-box, and allowed the child to look at its contents. A poorly brought-up colonial girl possesses little in the way of jewellery beyond a necklace and bracelet or two made by her own clever fingers from the seeds of the sponspeck melon and a few imitation pearls; but Mary had been a favourite wherever she went and had received many little presents. There was a necklace of jagged red corals which her mother had put round her neck as a baby, and that Rosalie gurgled so joyously over that Mary, after a moment’s hesitation, clasped it round the little dusky neck and told the child that she might wear it that night at the magic-lantern entertainment. For the Michaelmas holidays were approaching, and Sister Joanna was going to celebrate the break in the school term by giving one of her frequent little entertainments, only this time a new and up-to-date magic lantern, sent by admiring friends across the sea, was to make its début, and all the children were wildly excited about it. In the midst of Rosalie’s joyful caperings, the voice of Sister Joanna was heard calling:

“Mary, Mary, where are you, my child? Isn’t it time for the school bell?” And Mary jumped up guiltily (she had forgotten that the bell was to be rung a quarter of an hour earlier that day), just as Sister appeared in the doorway filling it with her plump, large presence. She was a short woman who in spite of her great activity could not keep down stoutness. Her large round face was pallid with the dead pallor peculiar to people who have lived long in hot climates, but lighted by an unfailing smile of cheerfulness and sky-blue eyes. She wore a quaint garb of black alpaca made in somewhat monk-like fashion, long and full, and confined by a cord at the waist, while on her head was an arrangement that resembled a cross between a coal-scuttle and a Turkish woman’s yashma. She belonged to no Order, but was an Order unto herself, and made her uniform with her own hands; and if it was a quaint and funny one no one laughed, for Sister Joanna was both liked and respected.

When Mary had told the tale of Rosalie’s trouble, Sister burst into her jolly laugh.

“The poor little thing! Was it afraid for its nice little fat brown body,” she said tenderly, and taking Rosalie on her knee rolled up the child’s cotton sleeves, looked at the plump pale arms, and pinched the soft neck.

“Let me catch any old mollmeit trying to eat my Rosalie!” she said fondly. “Run along, Mary, and ring the bell. Get lessons over early. Tell the children I am letting them off an hour earlier so that they may have time to curl their hair for to-night.” She laughed merrily at her own little jest, well knowing that hair curling is an unnecessary item in a coloured child’s toilette. She was always full of merry little jokes of this kind, and the natives being a laughter-loving lot rejoiced in them as much as she did.

Mary hurried away leaving Rosalie sitting happily on the old woman’s knees, and did not see her again until during the afternoon Sister carried her into the schoolroom fast asleep.

“Oh, Sister! How can you carry that great fat thing! You’ll be tired out before to-night,” said Mary reproachfully, for she thought Sister looked even paler than usual. And sure enough that night the old lady was too tired to eat any supper before starting for the entertainment. She looked as haggard as death, though her sky-blue eyes were brighter than ever and full of excitement; but the beautifully broiled mutton chop Mary had prepared, with potatoes baked in their skins lay on her plate untouched. Even when Mary made a cup of foamy coffee according to Sister’s own famous receipt it was wasted. Mary, in all the months she had been at the cottage, had never known Sister with anything but an excellent appetite, and was troubled, and before leaving for the school she cut the meat from the uneaten chop and made it into a sandwich, while the potatoes she sliced into a nice salad with a tiny onion chopped over it. This little repast she put on a table in Sister’s room. They were simple in their ways at the cottage.

Down at the school, the children were buzzing like bees outside the closed door, while Sister and the pupil-teachers within put the final touches to the magic-lantern arrangements. Mary fished Rosalie out of the crowd, and found that though she was still wearing her torn, school frock, she had been washed, her hair was braided, and she was proudly sporting the coral necklace. She still seemed more than half asleep, but she blinked happily at Mary.

The entertainment was an enormous success. The magic lantern worked like magic indeed, and there were howls of regret when at nine o’clock the last slide was shown. Sister Joanna made an announcement that during holiday week she would give another exhibition for the parents, and the children then danced and partook of the repast of buns and ginger-beer that kind Sister had provided. They were to go home at half-past nine punctually, but before that time Sister who was very tired left Mary in charge and went home.

“I’ll see the children safely off,” Mary promised.

“Oh, the children will be all right,” said Sister. “It’s my lantern and slides I’m thinking about;—pack them safely and put them away in the cupboard, Mary, or sure enough those rapscallions who come to clean up in the morning will be fiddling with them and break something.”

Mary promised not to leave until everything was locked up safely, and all the lights put out.

“You needn’t worry about anything, Sister. Just get to bed and have a good rest.”

Yet when about an hour later she came up the slope to the cottage, she saw by the faint red and purple gleams shining from one of the windows that Sister was still in the Oratory. She felt vexed to think that the old soul was at her prayers instead of being in bed, but knew better than to disturb her; and being very tired herself was not long getting into bed. She went to sleep thinking happily of the coming week of holidays to be spent with her family at Bloemhof. There were only two more days of school, and then on Saturday morning she was to leave by a carrier’s cart and would reach her home by Saturday afternoon.

During the night, she was much disturbed by the howling of her dog Fingo who was fastened in the yard. She had been allowed to bring Fingo from Bloemhof, and he had always slept in the kitchen, and been allowed the run of the house, but that very afternoon Sister had accused him of rooting in the garden, and insisted on his being kept tied up in future. Whether it was the curtailing of his freedom that desolated Fingo, it is hard to say, but certainly Mary had never before heard him make such tragic and doleful sounds. He at last left off, and she got to sleep, but it seemed only a moment later that she was awakened by a loud thumping on the front door, and sleepily putting out her hand for the matches, she suddenly realised that the light of early dawn was already in the room. Jumping out of bed, she threw a cloak over her night-dress and went to open the door. As she passed through the dining-room, she heard Sister also hurrying out of bed.

“Someone must be ill, Mary,” she called through her door, and as if in answer came another loud knocking and a voice crying in bitter trouble.

“Sister Joanna—Oh! Sister Joanna!”

“What, my poor thing? What?” called back the old woman, and came floundering half-dressed from her room as Mary opened the door.

A coloured woman was standing there, haggard and dishevelled, her hair hanging in streaks about her wild face, fear in her bloodshot eyes. Her clothes were rumpled as though they had been slept in, and she was panting and covered with dust. A picture of misery!

“Is my little Rosalie here?” she gasped, and with the question came a sickening odour of stale brandy. It was then they recognised her for Rosalie Paton’s mother.

“Here! Why, of course not, Mrs Paton,” cried Mary.

“What do you mean?” said Sister in astonishment.

“Then the mollmeit’s got her,” wailed the woman distractedly. “Oh, Jesus! The mollmeit’s got my child!”

“But what do you mean?” repeated Sister in a sterner voice, for she saw that the woman was on the verge of hysteria. “Rosalie went home with all the other children last night, I suppose! Do you mean to say they didn’t bring her to you?”

“No!” said the woman, and in her voice was dreadful despair, “God forgive me, Sister, I was drunk—and asleep—it was not till this morning that I knew she hadn’t been home—at least she wasn’t in the house—since then I’ve been to a dozen houses, and no one knows anything, but some of the children say that on their way home they were frightened by something that jumped out from behind a rock down there where the berg comes near the road—”

“Stuff and nonsense!” broke in Sister scornfully. “Listening to children’s tales! You just go back to the village, Sarah Paton, and look for your child. She’s there right enough. Someone has kept her for the night, knowing the state you were in. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, my woman. Be off now and find her, and when you have found her come straight back here and tell me, and see if you can turn over a new leaf after this.”

Thus with good-natured scoldings she waved the more than half-comforted woman from the door.

“Get back to your bed, Mary, child, and sleep a little longer. It’s not five o’clock yet, and we’ve earned a little lie-abed after the tiring day yesterday. That child’s all right—safely tucked up in some kind soul’s bed, you may be sure. It will be a lesson to that good-for-nothing hussy.”

But Mary though she went back to bed was too disturbed to sleep. She was haunted by the fear of harm having come to little Rosalie, and could not rid herself of foreboding. Why had she not gone down the road herself with the children? She had indeed watched them for awhile from the school door, and had adjured the elders to take the hands of the little ones and see them all safely to their doors. But well she knew the careless, irresponsible nature of the coloured race! No doubt the little ones had soon been allowed to lag behind. Even so, what harm could befall them on that straight road not three quarters of a mile long? Of course the talk of a mollmeit was silly and yet—and yet—Oh! it was no use staying in bed, worrying and fretting. She jumped out and busied herself getting breakfast, making the coffee on a little oil-stove, so that she might have the wood coals for the toast. She then looked into the larder, set the rest of yesterday’s milk in soup plates to thicken for dessert at the mid-day meal; put a little more pepper and salt on the neck of mutton that was for dinner, and turned it in its dish, and placed fresh wet cloths round the big lump of butter that must last till the end of the week. By that time, Sister also was dressed, and together according to custom, they went into the Oratory and said Matins before the small altar. Although she was not a real nun, Sister Joanna never missed saying any of the daily Offices, and at the morning and evening ones Mary always joined her.

It was a nice little Oratory, the floor covered with a soft hand-made rug of red and brown woollen scraps like little autumn leaves, sewn one above the other; several chairs with kneeling-stools before them, and an altar-table that no one would have guessed was made of rough packing-case wood for it was hidden by a scarlet cloth and linen embroidered by the school children, and there were flowers and candles upon it. The many small panes of the one window had been glorified by means of scarlet and purple tissue paper, which cut in sheets and pasted on alternate panes made an excellent substitute for stained glass, and when the sun shone through and fell in a flood of colour upon the patch-work rug, Mary felt a subtle pleasure woven amongst her prayers. Under the window, a large dark oaken chest lent a further air of ecclesiasticism to the little room. It was worm-eaten and full of cracks and holes, but was reputed to have been part of the furniture of a church, and Sister loved it, and kept the altar cloths and holy books in it.

As the two finished their orisons, the sound of voices broke in upon them, followed by a knocking on the door. Once more Sarah Paton stood without, but now several women were with her, and a scattering of children with scared faces and eyes ready to jump out of their heads. There was ill news to tell. Rosalie was not to be found in the village or out of it. No one had seen her since last night, but some of the elder children remembered calling out to her to “Come on” as she loitered sleepily behind. Other smaller children averred that as they were capering along in the rear, “something white” had darted out from behind a rock, and “made noises like a mollmeit.” They were quite unable to describe said noises, but declared that they had all run screaming down the road. Evidently in the pleasurable excitement of this adventure sleepy, lagging Rosalie had been forgotten; and no one thought of her again until with the morning came the weeping mother.

“And I tell you the mollmeit’s got her,” shrieked the unhappy woman once more, while the others gazed apprehensively at Sister Joanna.

“How long is that witch going to be left up in the mountain?” they muttered. “You must write to the Government, Sister. None of our children are safe—”

Sister Joanna did not conceal her impatience with them.

“It is all nonsense and silly superstition,” she said. “The child will be found all right. I’ll find her.” And she pulled Sarah Paton indoors and made her eat the breakfast Mary had prepared, scolding, comforting, and lecturing the poor woman all at once. She herself ate nothing so anxious was she to be off and start the search.

“Lock up, Mary,” she said briskly, “and come along. I’ll find the little schelm, see if I don’t, and give her a good shaking for causing all this trouble.”

However, a thorough search in every nook and corner of the village, and inquiry at every house, elicited no result, and at the end of the morning, Sister began to look as blank as the muttering women and much more weary. There was no question of school; the children were given a holiday and told to join in the search. The Dutch police were then communicated with, and the afternoon was spent going through Brandersberg. Sister Joanna was on her feet all day, but at five o’clock Mary persuaded her to return home, begging her to eat something and go straight to bed. Mary herself stayed some time later in the Location wandering about, questioning, and trying to comfort Sarah Paton with words of hope that had no response in her own breast. It was sundown before she got home tired and dispirited, and it was just as well that she had accepted a cup of tea in the village, for of course Sister had been too tired to prepare a meal and there was not even a fire in the kitchen. Knowing that Sister would be anxious to hear if there was any news, Mary went at once to her bedroom, but there was no one there; only a cloud of flies buzzing and crawling over the sandwich and potato salad which stood untouched by the bedside. That meant that Sister had eaten nothing since mid-day the day before, and Mary was worried. However, in the kitchen she found a cup with the remains of some herbal brew Sister had evidently been making for herself and a moment later Sister herself came out of the Oratory. Fresh hope and courage, gained perhaps in prayer, showed in her face, for though still pale, she looked extraordinarily excited, and her blue eyes gleamed with some inner fire that Mary’s news could not quench.

“We shall find her—we shall find her, never fear,” she prophesied.

But Mary went to bed cold and miserable, and trying to stave off a bout of neuralgia that had its origin in a tooth she could not afford to have stopped. The doleful howling of Fingo throughout the night further depressed her, and drove away all hope of sleep. In the morning, Sister Joanna decreed that Fingo must return to Bloemhof.

“I can quite understand your fondness for him, Mary, he’s a dear little dog, but we can’t be kept awake like this night after night. You must take him back with you to-morrow. By the way, I’ve made all arrangements for Tom Jackson to call for you.”

“But, Sister, I don’t want to go. I feel I can’t, unless Rosalie is found.”

“Nonsense, my dear, what good can you do? If she is to be found I’ll find her. While if you miss Jackson’s cart you miss your holiday, and I’m not going to have that.” There was resolution in the old woman’s voice and Mary made no further remark, only ate her breakfast and hurried off to school, for work had to go on whatever befell. It was the last day before the holidays and should have been a bright and merry one, but gloom hung over everyone. The children spoke in hushed voices, and at tiffin time instead of playing sat whispering in groups. Sister Joanna came in for a few moments in the morning and wished the children pleasant holidays; then went back to where she had been since breakfast time in the village, egging on the search and agitating for a party to be sent into the bush even up the mountain, if necessary.

During afternoon school, Mary’s neuralgia became so acute that she determined to go to the cottage for some painkiller, and having set her class a task, she put the eldest pupil-teacher in charged and slipped away.

A short-cut to the cottage was over a broken-down place in the schoolyard wall, through the cottage garden, and in by the kitchen door which stood open. Fingo whined as she passed, but she took no notice, being intent on the matter of relieving her pain. Gaining her room, she reached for the painkiller from a shelf and began to apply the medicament to her gums with the tip of her finger. At the same moment, she heard Sister Joanna going through the kitchen to the back door, and was on the point of getting up and making her presence known when the sound of Sister’s voice speaking to Fingo arrested her.

“What are you snivelling about, you dirty cur?”

Mary could hardly believe her ears. Not only the coarse words astonished her, but the indescribably vicious way in which they were spoken, the harsh voice so utterly unlike the genial tones she knew so well. The girl sat on her bed as though she had been glued there, and heard the rest of the sentence.

”—I’ve a good mind to settle your hash for you—only—” the threat remained unfinished. The speaker had evidently turned back into the kitchen and was moving about. Presently she went into the Oratory, and shut the door. Mary was meditating a stealthy flight, for without going into her own reasons she was suddenly averse to letting Sister Joanna know that she had heard the words addressed to Fingo, when the Oratory door was opened and Sister came back into the kitchen. She seemed to be busy at the drawer of the dresser, and next came the sound of a knife being sharpened on the doorstep. Afterwards there was a dead silence for two or three minutes. Then, in a curiously fierce whisper some words: “No—no—I mustn’t—I mustn’t—No! I must wait till to-morrow.”

A loud rap on the front door broke the sinister spell. Sister Joanna dropping something on the kitchen table left the kitchen, and Mary staying only long enough to hear a voice asking Sister to come at once to see Sarah Paton who was “taken bad,” crept out and made her escape by the back door. As she passed through the kitchen, she saw that the carving knife with a fresh edge to it lay upon the table.

When school was over at last, and the children gone, there was still much to be done, and it was dusk before Mary approached the house again, walking slowly, for she felt a strange reluctance to meet Sister Joanna. But the house was empty. Sister had not returned from her sick visit. Mary made the fire and put on the kettle for a cup of tea; then turned her attention to the matter of supper. Since Sarah Paton had first knocked on the door, no regular meal had been sat down to in the cottage; and after she had visited the larder, the bread-tin, and the egg-jar, Mary’s simple calculations told her that if she had eaten little during the two troubled days Sister Joanna had eaten absolutely nothing at all. Apparently another cup of herbal tea had been brewed and drunk, for the empty cup, giving out a faint peculiarly bitter odour, was on the table; herbal tea, however, is poor sustenance, and it behoved Mary to see about getting a good meal ready. The neck of mutton in the larder was two days’ old and no good to anyone but Fingo, but fortunately the butcher had left some stewing mutton that morning, and this Mary cut up and put into a saucepan with onions and a lump of butter, browned it over a fierce fire, added a cupful of cold water, and put it to simmer. Then she sat down to peel potatoes. She was going to make an Irish stew. As she sat there, her mind wrestled persistently with the problem of little Rosalie, and when she had finished the potatoes, she determined she would go into the Oratory and pray. She had often prayed for things, as the young do, with fervour and faith, and her prayers had sometimes been answered in a wonderful way. The thought of going to God, now, in the quiet house appealed to her. She stepped softly into the Oratory and kneeling down, not in her usual place but right before the altar, she prayed with all her heart that Rosalie might be found. When she had finished, the tears were streaming down her cheeks, so ardently and pleadingly like a child in trouble had she called upon God. Immediately her heart was lighter, her courage higher. It was as though she had passed a burden from her into other hands—very safe sure Hands.

As she rose, she felt a brittle, crunching sensation under her boot, and stooping picked out something from under the red and brown leaves of the rug, and a thrill of amazement ran suddenly through her. The chapel was by now so dark that she could only dimly see what it was she had found, but not for a moment did she mistake the familiar feel of a thing she had possessed all her life. It was her own little coral necklace! The necklace Rosalie was wearing when she disappeared!

No sound broke from the girl’s lips, but a cry went up from her heart at this strange answer to her prayer. She realised that if she had not gone to the altar step to pray, her foot would never have found the necklace. Bewildered, amazed, frightened as she was, she suddenly felt strong and secure,—God was at work.

As she opened the door that led back into the kitchen, lighted only by the flickering firelight, she collided heavily with someone, and her arm was gripped as by a hand of iron.

“What were you doing in there?” Sister Joanna, breathing heavily as if she had been running, barked the question hoarsely at her. Mary stared a moment, a sort of terror creeping over her at that harsh brutal voice heard twice in the same day. Some swift instinct warned her to conceal what she felt.

“I have been praying, Sister,” she answered quietly. “Praying that our little Rosalie may be found.”

Slowly the grip on her arm relaxed, and as though nothing untoward had happened, she moved across to the fire and lifted the saucepan.

“I’m afraid my Irish stew is burning! I hope it won’t taste.”

She was talking to hide something. A terrible inspiration had come to her that she must not share with Sister Joanna the discovery she had just made; and as she shook the saucepan with one hand, with the other she slipped the necklace into her pocket. Then she lighted the kitchen lamp, and got out the teapot.

“I’m just going to make you a cup of tea, Sister,” she said cheerfully. “I expect you are dead beat.”

The old woman had sunk into a chair by the table, but her eyes had a strange glare in them as she watched Mary, who affecting not to notice, bustled about rattling the tea-things.

“I can see you are just tired out, and as nervous and worried as ever you can be.” Mary’s arm was still tingling with pain, and that may have had something to do with her newly discovered powers of acting; but the sky-blue eyes still glared. At last, the tea was made and poured out.

“And now tell me, Sister dear,—is there any news yet?”

Sister Joanna gave a sigh as if some tight band round her had suddenly been loosened and she had breathing space once more.

“No, child,” and it was almost her old genial voice. “The men have come back from the bush. But to-morrow they are going up the mountain. I’ve worked them up to that.”

“I’m glad,” said Mary thoughtfully. “For do you know, Sister, I am beginning to believe as the children do, that there really is a mollmeit up there and that she is at the bottom of all the disappearances.”

The blue eyes fastened themselves keenly on the girl’s face, then, “I have always believed it myself,” said Sister Joanna solemnly.

The Irish stew had only a faintly burnt flavour, and looked appetising enough in its dish; but the sight of it had a curious effect on Sister Joanna. She looked at it almost ravenously, then turned away as though the sight sickened her.

“No—no, I couldn’t eat any,” she muttered half to herself. “I’m not hungry, but to-morrow—to-morrow I will make myself a little curry. Curry always brings back my appetite and bucks me up when I am tired out.”

Mary’s own appetite had taken wings since that curious scene in the kitchen. Nevertheless she made a great pretence of hunger. Fortunately, Sister did not stay to see whether the large helping of stew was eaten, but rose and stumbled towards her room which was next to the dining-room. It was easy to see that she was dropping with fatigue. How could it be otherwise after two days of ceaseless activity during which she had eaten nothing? Her heavy pallid cheeks hung in haggard rolls about her jaws, and with the glare gone out of them, her eyes resembled two large blue beads stuck in a fat doll’s face.

“I’ll go to bed, Mary,” she said heavily. “I must get rest.”

“Yes, do, Sister. No Compline in the Oratory to-night, I suppose.”

Like a flash, energy came back into the old woman’s glance, and the haggard muscles of her face seemed to tighten; but Mary, though her heart had come bounding up into her throat, ate on placidly.

“No,” said Sister slowly, “I shall say the Office in my room, and I advise you, my dear, to get to bed as soon as possible, for Jackson will be here for you at five in the morning. Have you got your things ready?”

“Not yet,” said Mary, and secretly repeated to herself, “Not yet!” She was dazed, bewildered, and terrified; creeping, creeping terror of she knew not what was in her veins. But not for nothing had she prayed and felt answering faith and courage poured into her heart! Definitely, she knew that after that prayer and its answer she had no right to go yet—until Rosalie was found—

Though she could not eat, she sat for some little time at the table, making sounds with her knife and fork. Her idea was to prolong the evening as much as possible. She did not wish to go to bed until Sister Joanna slept. She could hear the latter undressing, and presently murmuring the words of the Office; later, the iron bed creaked, but sleep was as yet far from that bed. Long ago, Mary had observed in Sister Joanna an intense, almost foxlike acuteness, that in one less kind and genial would have alarmed the girl; now it did alarm her, for from the silent bedroom, through the closed door she felt it directed upon her; those unfortunate last words about Compline had aroused it!

At last, Mary rose and softly cleared the table, went out to the yard and fed Fingo, made one or two little preparations for the morning, then bolted the back door, and retired to her room. With her door carefully ajar, as she often left it, she then began to shake out and fold up her holiday things and pack them in a carpet bag. In all she did, she was careful to be perfectly natural and make no sound more or less than she would any ordinary night, for she was still aware of that acute attention piercing through the very walls about her. At last, she washed her face, brushed and plaited her hair, and got into bed. But under her night-dress she was fully dressed.

There in the darkness she lay thinking, thinking, and while she thought, she practised breathing regularly and evenly as she had often done when a child. What was the meaning of it all?—the strange words in the kitchen—the abuse flung at the dog—the screeching knife—the grip on her arm—the watching eyes—the coral necklace in the Oratory? Mary had no clear idea; only, when she tried to piece the strange puzzle together, she was afraid with a deadly fear that froze the blood in her veins and paralysed her heart.

It seemed as though years instead of hours passed before that happened which she had known must happen—very gently Sister Joanna’s door opened, and feet came padding softly to the kitchen; beside Mary’s door they paused; it was for this moment Mary had practised her regular breathing, and the practise stood her in good stead. After some frightful moments, the longest it seemed to Mary she had ever lived through, the stealthy feet crossed the kitchen, and the Oratory door was opened. It was then that Mary sat up in bed straining her ear-drums until she thought they would crack; but the only sound that reached her was a little soft creaking sound. A moment later, she was lying flat again, breathing regularly, for the feet were returning to pause by her door and the light of a candle flickered in. At last the gentle opening and shutting of another door, and the creak of the iron bed under a heavy body told that Sister Joanna had finished her midnight prowlings. It was Mary’s turn to get up.

For a full hour, she stood listening in the darkness and in the end she heard the stertorous breathing of a stout, tired woman fallen heavily asleep. To strike a sulphur match without noise was no simple task, and only accomplished by making a cave of the bed-clothes. This time it was Mary who stole, candle in hand, to the Oratory. Drops of cold sweat stood on her forehead and round her mouth, as without a sound she opened the door of that silent room to seek there that which Sister Joanna had hidden and feared for another to find. Whatever and wherever it was, there was no time to lose. At any moment the old woman might wake! Fearfully the girl stole to the altar, and lifting the heavy red cloth stared beneath. Nothing!

The only other possible place was the oak chest. With faltering hands she lifted the lid (which gave a little creak) and looked in, and at what she saw the candle all but fell from her hand. White and still upon the folded altar cloths lay the body of little Rosalie. Mary turned faint and sick, but the Power that had sustained her throughout the terrible night did not fail her in that moment. She put out her hand to touch the child, and at the same moment a faint bitter odour of herbs came towards her, and she recognised it as the same she had smelled in the cup in the kitchen. There was a brown stain on the child’s lips, and drops of liquid on her dress. Like a flash Mary realised the truth, and touching the little hands found them still warm. The child was not dead, but under the influence of a sleeping herb. Plenty of air came through the holes and cracks of the old chest. She was being kept asleep until—until what. The sinister words muttered in the kitchen came back to memory.

“No, no, I mustn’t—I mustn’t—I must wait till to-morrow!”

Until to-morrow when Mary would be gone. Was that it? Then, in the silent house—what?

“To-morrow I will make a curry!”

Ah, God! What terrible thoughts! They almost unnerved Mary, but she found strength to catch up the child’s still form, and turning fled from the accursed place. The lid of the chest fell with a loud bang, and as she gained the back door and fumbled with the bolt, she heard Sister Joanna leap like a tiger from her lair.

Ah! What a race was that through the black night! Over garden beds to the gate mercifully open, and down the long, lonely road. Far, far in front lay the native village and a single point of light glimmering out from a sick woman’s hut; and behind was a wild beast balked of its prey, snarling, and panting. Mary ran until a glaze came over her eyes and the blood burst from her nostrils. The rush of the air woke the child in her arms to weak but piercing crying, and only then did the padding shambling feet behind begin to falter and fall back. But Mary ran staggering on toward the light burning in Sarah Paton’s hut, and only stopped to fall fainting on the doorstep.

Within half an hour the tale was told, and men with lanterns in their hands and black fury in their hearts were out on the road. But they found no one and the school and cottage were both empty.

The mollmeit had fled to the mountain at last.

Sewn into the mattress of Sister Joanna’s bed were discovered the emigration papers of Janet Fink, and later, from under the bed of herbs in the garden men dug out the skulls and bones of four little children. Then, raging, they burned the Cottage and school of the Friend for Little Children, and with brands from the fire set alight the thick bush of the mountain. For four days the flames roared and crackled, sending down great gusts of heat to the town below, and by night lighting up the veld for miles. The rock rabbits and mountain buck came scudding down to the safety of the bush, but the men, deployed in a wide circle round the base of the berg, never raised a gun to them so intent were they on their grim vigil.

At length the flames died down, and Thaba Inkosisan blackened and bare, with no leaf or flower or branch, nor any living thing left upon it, gloomed silent above the town.

Chapter Six.

On the Way to Beira.

Dettington lounged moodily against the counter of Randal and Hallam’s winkel, his eyes sardonic, his mouth decorated with discontent. He was bored to the verge of suicide. Two whole days had been wasted in Umtali waiting for the convoy of waggons with all his kit on board, to arrive from Salisbury. Thirty miles off he had taken advantage of a lift offered him by a man in a trap and come on ahead. Now he was wishing himself back at the waggons instead of stuck in this place where everyone appeared to have been dead and buried for the last five years, in spite of the recent native rebellion when they had all had to leave their homes and come into laager with not enough food and ammunition to go round. Since then the Imperial troops had passed through, bent on punitive measures, and people had gone back to their homes and were dully occupied in nursing and feeding themselves into good health again.

The burden of Bettington’s song of dolour was that there was no one to talk to, nothing to drink but bad whiskey at a pound a bottle, not a man who could play poker worth a tin tack, no one keen on a shoot, and not a pretty woman in sight! Driven to sitting among the piles of coloured blankets, and bags of meal, and Kaffir corn, that composed the stock-in-grade of Randal and Hallam, he grew madder and madder every minute. Not so was he accustomed to waste his good time and rare gifts.

The shop was a large galvanised iron shed, lined with shelves and a counter, and stuffed with every imaginable thing on earth that had a strong smell attached to it—leather, limbo, toilet soap, paraffin, cheese, tarred rope, shoddy blankets, and tinned foods sweltering in their tins. Hallam who had been a medical student at Columbia until the examiners turned him down, was casting up the firm’s books, perched on a packing-case at the far end of the shop. Randal flannel-shirted, pipe in mouth, coatless, tieless, his fair hair in damp streaks on his forehead, sat opposite Bettington, his elbows folded on the counter before him. No one would have guessed him an old Harrovian (except Bettington who was one himself), and one who in his year had stroked for Leander, but he was at peace with all the world, in spite of a poisoned foot that kept him from leaving the premises. Nothing about him of the restless energy which characterised the blonde man burnt a bright red who sat on the other side of the counter.

Vigour and vitality was in Bettington’s every line. He wore his hat slouched low, but beneath it could be discerned a shrewd grey-green eye, a nose jutting out like an insolent rock, a mouth with more than a hint of coarseness but none of weakness about it.

With the crop in his hand, he smote indiscriminately at his gaitered legs or the bags of mealies and other merchandise surrounding him.

“Nice country!” he muttered, giving so vicious a cut at a pile of shoddy Kaffir blankets, striped with gaudy red and yellow, that a cloud of dust ascended from it and joined all the other little cloudlets whirling and whisking through the open door from the hot and dusty street.

“You needn’t kick—you’re leaving it,” said Randal, sucking peacefully at his pipe. “Stop beating the colour out of my blankets. I got to make my living selling them for portières and table covers.”

“No one in this hole with the spunk to get up a shoot, and half a dozen lions roaring their heads off out at Penhalonga! Oh, pot!”

“Yes, it’s sad,” agreed Randal. “But the fellows round here are like Oom Paul, they haven’t lost any lions. Besides, this is the first I’ve heard of half a dozen. The nigger only reported one, and I daresay he saw that in his dreams.”

Bettington became inconsequently derisive.

“This would be a fine place to raise a team for the Olympian Games, I should think—or send out an expedition against the Mad Mullah—any great adventure might have birth here!”

“What a fellow you are, Bettington! Haven’t you had enough excitement round Salisbury during this unholy rebellion? One would think you’d be glad of a rest!”

“Rest—nothing,” said the other savagely. “Time enough to rest when I’m dead.”

“You soon will be, all right,” prophesied Randal cheerfully. “You worry too much behind your face.”

No similar accusation could be levelled at Eustace, commonly known as Useless Randal, and Bettington was about to intimate as much when something caused him to sit to attention. A woman had quietly entered the shop, and from a sheet of paper in her hand began to read out a list of her requirements to Hallam. It transpired that she stood in need of a tin kettle, a water bag, six tins of bully beef, six ditto of sardines, a box of biscuits, matches, sugar, tea, coffee, and plenty of condensed milk. All were to be packed in an open packing-case ready for use on a journey. Bettington listened to these instructions because he liked the sound of her voice, but he considered it out of place in Randal to sit with mouth open and ears cocked like a terrier at point.

She had pretty dark bronzy hair pushed up under a sunburnt Panama; worn but well-shaped brown leather shoes; ditto gloves; and a good line to her grey linen coat. When she turned away from Hallam to look speculatively at the provisions on the shelves, Bettington caught sight of a pale haughty little profile, a small ear, and a curving cheek. It was a long while indeed since a profile had impressed him so agreeably. A slight sound, made no doubt inadvertently, with his crop, caused her to turn her head quickly in the direction of the two men, revealing for a moment a face that would more than have fulfilled the promise of its outline but for the look of weariness and disdain stamped upon it. At her glance, Randal rose upon his poisoned foot, clutched the buttonless shirt across his bosom, and bowed with grace. Bettington, whose hat had been jammed on his forehead concealing all but one arrogant eye, removed it abruptly and placed it on the counter, thus affording to anyone sufficiently interested an uninterrupted view of the sanguine complexion and well-shaped head of Africa’s most brilliant journalist.

It was not quite apparent whether or not the lady availed herself of this priceless opportunity—while nodding recognition to Randal, but a faint colour showed in her cheek as she turned back to Hallam.

“Please don’t forget the condensed milk,” she murmured. “And would you try and pick out the freshest looking tins, Mr Hallam? My little child lives on it, and it is very important to have it good. You know the last you had was dreadfully yellow and old.”

“Yes, it was a bad lot, Mrs Stannard. I am awfully sorry, but, as you know, we couldn’t help it. We never meant to sell that consignment when we found it was bad. But Colonel Monk commandeered it for the children’s use as there was nothing better in the town.”

“I know. I’m not complaining,” she said gently. “The children would have starved without it. Only I do hope you’ve got some fresher tins in now?”

“Why, certainly,” Hallam waved his hand at the well-filled shelves behind him. “We’ve got plenty of everything since the troops came up. And I can vouch for the milk—it’s a first-class brand, and fresh as paint. Where are these things to be sent, Mrs Stannard? Out to your camp?”

“No,” she said in a low voice; “keep them here until that convoy of waggons arrives from Salisbury—they are expected to-night, I believe—then send the box out to be put on the waggon in which I have engaged accommodation for myself and child.” Hallam looked up as if something had hit him, but she stared at him so haughtily that he dropped his eyes and applied himself to the business of adding up the bill. She paid, and with a cold nod and no further glance at the other men left the shop. Bettington, having occasion to go to the door to examine some whip thongs that hung in a bunch before the entry, saw her walking in light fleet fashion towards the Police Camp.

“She won’t hurt the daisies,” he murmured pleasantly to himself, as he sauntered back into the shop where the two other men were neck deep in what sounded perilously like village scandal.

“What do you think of that?” Hallam was inquiring with a stunned air. He had come over to Randal’s side of the shop. “She’s had enough! Going to take the baby and scoot!”

“And I don’t blame her a brass button. The only wonder is she didn’t do it long ago!” Randal wore a judicial manner.

“Her sister kept her from it, I guess, and lack of funds. Stannard is tight with the sinews of war. Needs them all to square his whiskey bills.”

Bettington made no attempt to take part in this interesting dialogue, but listened to it very carefully and pensively.

“What will Miss van Rimmel do?” Randal wondered. “Go with her?”

“Not she. She’s always been dead against her sister leaving Stannard. Thinks that while there’s life there’s hope of reformation, even in such a double-dyed sheep as he is. I bet if Mrs Stannard does go, she’ll stay behind and nurse Stan through—and the Doc says he’s got ’em bad this time—rats and cats and purple elephants.”

“I don’t care what colour the menagerie is as long as it keeps Miss van Rimmel here.”

“Me neither,” averred Hallam elegantly.

They became aware of Bettington’s sardonic presence, and dropped the subject as if it burnt.

“As I was saying,” remarked Randal briskly, “we had better take fifty pounds of that dried buck off that Boer. It’s the best biltong I’ve struck since I dunno when.”

“Right you are!” Hallam began to write in his note book. Randal turned his attention to the thoughtful journalist.

“What about your lions, Bet? Still think of going out to look for them?”

Bet regarded him pensively.

“So I am to have the society of a pretty lady between here and Beira?” he remarked.

“You? Who said so?” Randal’s voice sounded slightly aggressive. “I suppose there are other people besides you on those waggons, Bettington?”

“Yes, but no one so good-looking,” said Bettington, wrinkling his rocky nose and gazing at them with bland eyes. “Besides the only empty tent is the one on the waggon where my kit is.”

The other two studied his red complexion discontentedly.

“Well, you ought to be very nice to that lady,” quoth Hallam at last.

“I’ll try to be,” promised Bettington earnestly. The American may or may not have been reassured, but Randal stirred uneasily.

“She drew a blank in the marriage lottery, all right,” continued Hallam. “But she has a nice little kid, and a sister that could take any man in this country in tow if she cared to, but she don’t.”

“Wise sister!” thought Bettington, “but I’m glad it’s not she who’s going to Beira.” What he said was:

“I should regard Stannard as more in the nature of a surprise packet with a live bomb inside it than a blank. I used to know him years ago, before drink and gambling debts drove him out of the army. How came a pretty woman like that to tie up with him?”

“You can search me. I guess she hadn’t seen many other fellows.”

“That was just it,” proffered Randal. “They belong to an old Huguenot family, and these girls were brought up as innocent as lambs on a farm near Worcester, and I suppose thought everything that had worn a British uniform was an angel, and every man that came from England a gentleman.”

“Well, they know better now, no doubt,” remarked Bettington pleasantly, and looked at his watch. “I think I’ll go round to the Bank and see if I can decoy Johnson out to Penhalonga to-night. Sure you won’t come, Hallam?”

“Can’t! Randal’s poisoned foot has me tied up here.”

After the journalist had gone, Randal spoke to his partner gloomily. “Damn bad luck his going on the same trek with Mrs Stannard. She’s just rottenly unhappy enough not to care what she does, and he’s just the fellow women throw their bonnets over the mill for.”

“Why, he is as ugly as Halifax!” exclaimed Hallam.

“That makes nix. He’s got brains behind that lovely complexion, and women like brains.”

“More likely that insolent, don’t-care-a-tinker’s-curse air of his that gets ’em,” mused the American.

“He doesn’t care a tinker’s curse either. He’d walk over anybody to get his own way. He threw down the editorship of the biggest paper at the Cape because he wouldn’t take orders from the owners, and the same thing up at Salisbury. He hadn’t run the Journal a month before he bust up with Max the proprietor. Refused to air Max’s politics because they weren’t his own, and went off and fought the niggers instead. Now he’s got another big job in Johannesburg. Everybody wants him till they get him. There’s no doubt he can put it all over every other journalist in South Africa.”

Later, the subject of this monograph returned to the shop with a demand for .303 cartridges, and the announcement that he had got Johnson, a horse, and some boys. Remained only to get the lion, and he seemed cocksure of that.

His parting injunction to Randal was to have his box of provisions put on McKinnon’s waggon if the convoy passed through before he got back, and to send out a messenger to let him know where the waggons were so that he could go straight after them without returning to Umtali.

As it happened, he did not get back, and the waggons passed through that night whilst he and Johnson were lying behind a roughly constructed scherm between the Penhalonga hills. Smokeless, drinkless, oppressed by a deep and nameless silence, ears straining and guns at the cock, they were in a state of discomfort only to be suffered in the quest for glory. But the lion came at the pitch-black hour of two, and his doom was dight.