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furnish forth a good deathbed scene seldom goes naked of an excellent tradition. I have been at some pains to discover the story of David Uyo; and though some or the greater part of it may throw no further back than to the vrouws of the dorp, it seems to me that they have done their part at least as well as David Uyo did his, and this is the tale I gleaned.

When David was a young man the Boers were not yet scattered abroad all over the veldt, and the farms lay in to the dorps, and men saw one another every day. There was still trouble with the Kaffirs at times, little risings and occasional murders, with the sacking and burning of homesteads, and it was well to have the men within a couple of days' ride of the field-cornet, for purposes of defence and retaliation. But when David married all this weighed little with him. "What need of neighbors?" he said to his young wife. "We have more need of land-good land and much of it. We will trek."

"It shall be as you will, David," answered Christina. "I have no wish but yours, and neighbors are nothing to me."

There was a pair of them, you see -both Boers of the best, caring more for a good fire of their own than to see the smoke from another's chimney soiling the sky. Within a week of their agreement the wagons were creaking towards the rising sun, and the whips were saluting the morning. David and Christina fronted a new world together, and sought virgin soil. For a full month they journeyed out, and out-spanned at last, on a mellow evening, on their home.

"Could you live here, do you think, Christina?" asked David, smiling, and she smiled back at him and made no other answer.

There was need for none, indeed, for no Boer could pass such a place. It

was a rise, a little rand, flowing out from a tall kopje, grass and bush to its crown, and at its skirts ran a wide spruit of clear water. The veldt waved like a sea,-not nakedly and forlorn, but dotted with gray mimosa and big green dropsical aloes, that here and there showed a scarlet plume like a flame. The country was thigh-deep in grass and spoke of game; as they looked a springbok got up and fled. So here they stayed.

David and his Kaffirs built the house, such a house as you see only when the man who is to make his home in it puts his hand to the building. David knew but one architecture, that of the great hills and the sky, and when all was done, the house and its background clove together like a picture in a fit frame, the one enhancing the other, the two being one in perfection. It was thatched, with deep eaves, and these made a cool stoep and cast shadows on the windows; while the door was red, and took the eye at once, as do the plumes of the aloes. It was not well devised,-to say so would be to lend David a credit not due to him; but it occurred excellently.

The next thing that occurred was a child, a son, and this set the pinnacle on their happiness. His arrival was the one great event in many years, for the multiplication of David's flocks and herds was so well graduated, the growth of his prosperity so steady and of so even a process, that it tended rather to content than to joy. It was like having money rather than like getting it. In the same barefoot quiet their youth left them, and the constant passing of days marked them, tenderly at first, and then more deeply. Their boy, Trikkie, was a man and thinking of marrying, when the consciousness of the leak in their lives stood up before them.

They were sitting of an evening on the stoep, watching the sun go down

and pull his ribbons after him, when Christina spoke.

"David," she said, "yesterday was twenty-five years since our marriage. We-we are growing old, David.”

She spoke with a falter, believing what she said. For though the blood is running strong and warm, and the eye is as clear as the heart is loyal, twenty-five years is a weary while to count back to one's youth.

David turned and looked at her. He saw for a moment with her eyes-saw that the tenseness of her girlhood had vanished, and he was astonished. But he knew he was strong and hale, well set-up and a good man to be friends with, and as he gripped his knees, he felt the tough muscle under his fingers, and it restored him.

"Christina," he said, seeing she was troubled, "it is the same with both of us. You are not afraid to grow old with me, little cousin?"

She came closer to him, but said nothing. It was soon after that, and a wonderful thing in its way, such as David had never heard of before, that there came to them another boy, a wee rascal that shattered all the cobwebs of twenty-five years, and gave Christina something better to think of than the footsteps of time.

Trikkie had been glorious enough in his time, and was glorious enough still, for the matter of that; but this was a creature with exceptional points, which neither David nor Christina-nor, to do him justice, Trikkie could possibly overlook. Trikkie had a voice like a bell, and whiskers like the father of a family, and stood six foot two in his naked feet, and lacked no excellence that a sturdy bachelor should possess. But the other, who was born to the name of Paul, lamented his arrival with a vociferous note of disappointment in the world that was indescribably endearing; had a head clothed in down like the intimate garments of an

ostrich chick, and was small enough for David to put in his pocket. He brought a new horizon with him and imposed it on his parents; he was, in brief, a thing to make a deacon of a Jew peddlar.

Thereafter, life for David and Christina was no longer a single phenomenon, but a series of developments. It was like sailing in agreeably rough water. No pensive mood could survive the sight of mighty Trikkie gamboling like a young bull in the company of Paul; nor could quiet hours impart a melancholy while the welkin rang with the voice of the kleintje bullying the adoring Kaffirs. Where before life had glided, now it steeplechased, taking its days bull-headed, and Paul grew to the age of four as a bamboo grows, in leaps.

Then Trikkie, the huge, the hairy, the heavy-footed, the man who prided himself on his ability to make circumstances, discovered, in a revealing flash, that he was, after all, a poor creature, and that the brightest being on earth was Katje Voss, whose people had settled about thirty miles off-next door, as it were. Katje held views not entirely dissimilar, but she consented to marry him, and the big youth walked on air. Katje was a dumpy Boer girl. with a face all cream and roses, and a figure that gave promise of much fat hereafter. Christina had imagined other things, but the idea is a rickety structure and she yielded; while David had never considered such an emergency, and consented heartily. Behind Trikkie's back he talked of grandchildren, and was exceedingly happy.

Then his dream-fabric tumbled about his ears.

Trikkie had ridden off to worship his beloved, and David and Christina, as was their wont, sat on the stoep. They watched the figure of their son out of sight, and talked a while, and then lapsed into the silence of perfect com

panionship. The veldt was all about them, as silent and friendly as they, and the distance was mellow with a haze of heat. From the kraals came at intervals the voice of little Paul in fluent Kaffir; David smiled over his pipe and nodded to his wife once when the boy's voice was raised in a shout. Christina was sewing; her thoughts were on Katje and were still vaguely hostile.

Of a sudden she heard David's pipe clatter on the ground, and looked sharply round at him. He was staring intently into void sky; his brows were knitted and his face was drawn; even as she turned he gave a hoarse cry.

She rose quickly, but he rose too, and spoke to her in an unfamiliar voice.

"Go in," he said. "Have all ready, for our son has met with a mishap. He has fallen from his horse."

She gasped and stared at him, but could not speak.

"Go and do it," he said again, looking at her with hard eyes, and suddenly she saw, as by an inward light, that here was not madness, but truth. It spurred her.

"I will do it," she said swiftly. "But you will go and bring him in?"

"At once," he replied, and was away to the shed for the cart. The Kaffirs came running to inspan the horses, and shrank from him as they worked. He was white through his tan, and he breathed loud. Little Paul saw him, and sat down on the ground and cried quietly.

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there." A tenderness overwhelmed him, and he caught a great sob and put his arm about her. "All must be ready, little cousin. Time enough to grieve afterwards-all our lives, Christina, all our lives!"

She put her hand on his breast. "All shall be ready, David," she answered. "Trust me, David."

He drove off, and she watched him lash the horses down the hill and force them at the drift-he, the man who loved horses and knew them as he knew his children. His children! She fled into the house to do her office and to drink to the bottom of the cup the bitterness of motherhood. A cool bed, linen, cold water and hot water, brandy and milk, all the insignia of the valley of the shadow did she put to hand, and con over and adjust and think upon, and then there was the waiting. She waited on the stoep, burning and tortured, boring at the horizon with dry eyes, and praying and hoping. A lifetime went in those hours, and the sun was slanting down before the road yielded, far and far away, a speck that grew into a cart going slowly. By-and-by she was able to see her husband driving, but nobody with him,only a rag or a garment that fluttered from the side. Her mind snatched at it; was it-God! what was it?

David drove into the yard soberly; she was at the stoep.

"All is ready," she said in a low voice. "Will you bring him in?"

"Yes," he said; and she went inside with her heart thrashing like a kicking horse.

David carried in his son in his arms; he was not yet past that. On the white bed inside they laid him, and where his fair head touched the pillow it dyed it red. Trikkie's face was white and blue, and his jaw hung oddly; but once he was within the door, some reinforcement of association came to Christina, and she went about

her ministry purposefully and swiftly, a little comforted. At the back of her brain dwelt some idea such as this: here was her house, her home, there David, there Trikkie, here she, and where these were together Death could never make the fourth. The same thought sends a stricken child to its mother. David leant on the foot of the bed, his burning eyes on the face of his son, and his brows tortured with anxiety. Christina brought some drink in a cup and held it to the still lips of the young man.

"Drink, Trikkie," she pleaded softly. “Drink, my kleintje. Only a drop, Trikkie, and the pain will fly away."

She spoke as though he were yet a child, for a mother knows nothing of manhood when her son lies helpless. The arts that made him a man shall keep him a man; so she coaxed the closed eyes and the dumb mouth.

But Trikkie would not drink, heard nothing, gave no sign. Christina laid drenched cloths to his forehead, deftly cleansed and bandaged the gaping rent in the base of the skull whence the life whistled forth, and talked to her boy all the while in the low crooning mother-voice. David never moved from the foot of the bed, and never loosed his drawn brows. In came little Paul silently and took his hand, but he never looked down, and the father and the child remained there throughout the languid afternoon.

Evening cool was growing up when Trikkie opened his eyes. Christina was wetting towels for bandages, and her back was towards him, but she knew instantly and came swiftly to his side. David leaned forward breathlessly, and little Paul cried out with the grip of his hand. They saw a waver of recognition in Trikkie's eyes, a fond light, and it seemed that his lips moved. Christina laid her ear to them.

"And-a-shod--horse!"

murmured

Trikkie. Nothing more. An hour after he was cold, and David was alone on the stoep, questioning pitiless skies and groping for God, while Christina knelt beside the bed within and wept blood from her soul.

They buried Trikkie in a little kraal on the hillside, and David made the coffin. When he nailed down the lid he was an old man; when the first red clod rung on it, he felt that life had emptied itself. When they were back in the house again, Christina turned to him.

"You knew," she said, in a strange voice "You knew, but you could not save him." And she laughed aloud. David covered his face with his hands and groaned, but the next instant Christina's arms were about him.

Yet of their old life, before the deluge of grief, too much was happy to be all swamped. Time softened the ruggedness of their wound somewhat, and a day came when all the world was no longer black. Little Paul helped them much, for what had once been Trikkie's was now his, and as he grew before their eyes, his young strength and beauty were a balm to them. David was much abroad in the lands now, for he was growing mealies and rapidly becoming a rich man; and as he rode off in the morning, and rode in at sundown, his new gravity of mind and mien broke up to the youngster who jumped at the stirrup with shouts and laughter and demanded to ride on the saddle-bow. At intervals, also, Paul laid claim to a gun, to spurs, to a watch, to all the things that go in procession across a child's horizon, and Christina was not proof against the impulse to smile at him.

It is not to be thought, of course, that the shock of foreknowledge, of omnipotent vision, had left David scathless. Though the other details of the tragedy shared his memory, and elbowed the terrifying sense of revela

tion, he would find himself now and again peering at the future, straining to foresee, as a sailor bores at a fogbank. Then he would catch himself, and start back shuddering to the instant matters about him. Eventualities he could meet, but in their season and hand to hand, afar off they mastered him. Christina, too, dwelt on it at seasons; but, by some process of her woman's mind, it was less dreadful to her than to David: she, too, could dream at times.

One day she was at work within the house, and Paul ran in and out. She spoke to him once about introducing an evil-smelling water-tortoise; he went forth to exploit it in the yard. From time to time his shrill voice reached her; then the frayed edges of David's black trousers of ceremony engaged her, to the exclusion of all else. Between the scissors and the needle, at last, there stole on her ear a faint tap-tap-such a sound as water dropping on to a board makes. It left her unconscious for a while, and then grew a little louder, with a note of vehemence. At last she looked up and listened. Tap, tap, it went, and she sprang from her chair and went to the stoep and looked out along the road. Far off on the hillside was a horse, ridden furiously on the downward road, and though dwarfed by the miles, she could see the rider flogging and his urgent crouch over the horse's withers. It was a picture of mad speed, of terror and violence, and struck her with a chill. Were the Kaffirs risen? she queried. Was there war abroad? Was this mad rider her husband?

The last question struck her sharply, and she glanced about. Little Paul was sitting on a stone, plaguing the water-tortoise with a stick, and speaking to himself and it. The sight reassured her, and she viewed the rider again with equanimity. But now she was able to place him: it was David,

and the horse was his big roan. The pace at which he rode was winding up the distance, and the hoofs no longer tap-tapped, but rung insistently. There was war, then; it could be nothing else. Her category of calamities was brief; and war and the death of her dear ones nearly exhausted it.

David galloped the last furlongs with a tightened rein, and froth snowed from the bit. He pulled up in the yard and slipped from the saddle. Christina saw again on his face the white stricken look and the furrowed frown that had stared on Trikkie's death. David stood with the bridle in his hand and the horse's muzzle against his arm and looked around. He saw Christina coming towards him with quick steps, and little Paul, abandoning the skellpot, running to greet him. He staggered and drew his hand across his forehead.

Christina had trouble to make him speak.

"A dream," he kept saying, "an evil dream."

"A lying dream," suggested Christina anxiously.

"Yes," he hastened to add, “a lying dream."

"About-about little Paul?" was her timid question.

David was silent for a while, and then answered. "I saw him dead," he replied with a shudder. "God! I saw it as plain as I saw him a moment ago in the kraal."

They heard the child's gleeful shout the same instant. "I've got you! I've got you!" he cried from without.

"He has a water-tortoise," explained Christina with a smile. "Paul," she called aloud, "come indoors."

"Ja," shouted the child, and they heard him run up the steps of the stoep.

"Look," he said, standing at the door, "I found this in the grass. What sort is it, father?"

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