y at the
farm. Benita asked who had ordered the box to be unpacked, and Sally
answered that the Heer Meyer had ordered it so that she might not be
disturbed in her sleep, and that her things should be ready for her when
she woke.

"The Heer Meyer thinks a great deal about other people," said Benita.

"Ja, ja!" answered the old half-breed. "He tink much about people when
he want to tink about them, but he tink most about himself. Baas Meyer,
he a very clever man--oh! a very clever man, who want to be a great man
too. And one day, Missee, he be a great man, great and rich--if the Heer
God Almighty let him."

VI

THE GOLD COIN

Six weeks had gone by since the eventful evening of Benita's arrival at
Rooi Krantz. Now the spring had fully come, the veld was emerald with
grass and bright with flowers. In the kloof behind the house trees had
put out their leaves, and the mimosas were in bloom, making the air
heavy with their scent. Amongst them the ringdoves nested in hundreds,
and on the steep rocks of the precipice the red-necked vultures fed
their young. Along the banks of the stream and round the borders of
the lake the pig-lilies bloomed, a sheet of white. All the place was
beautiful and full of life and hope. Nothing seemed dead and hopeless
except Benita's heart.

Her health had quite come back to her; indeed, never before had she felt
so strong and well. But the very soul had withered in her breast. All
day she thought, and all night she dreamed of the man who, in cold
blood, had offered up his life to save a helpless woman and her child.
She wondered whether he would have done this if he had heard the answer
that was upon her lips. Perhaps that was why she had not been given time
to speak that answer, which might have made a coward of him. For nothing
more had been heard of Robert Seymour; indeed, already the tragedy of
the ship _Zanzibar_ was forgotten. The dead had buried their dead, and
since then worse disasters had happened in the world.

But Benita could not bury her dead. She rode about the veld, she sat
by the lake and watched the wild fowl, or at night heard them flighting
over her in flocks. She listened to the cooing of the doves, the booming
of the bitterns in the reeds, and the drumming of the snipe high in air.
She counted the game trekking along the ridge till her mind grew weary.
She sought consolation from the breast of Nature and found none; she
sought it in the starlit skies, and oh! t