surprised by a party of Basutos, who had gone out on a shooting
expedition to the valley of the Vaal. We instantly took to flight, but
before we had gone fifty yards, Miss Hordern was struck by an arrow, and
the wound proved almost instantly fatal. I stopped as soon as I saw her
fall, and took her in my arms, too much distressed by this last
misfortune to heed my own danger.

"What the pursuers would have done to me, I do not know. But when I
recovered from the swoon of grief into which I had fallen over the body
of my dead friend, I saw a tall and noble-looking warrior bending over
me, his fine eyes and manly features expressing a sympathy for my
affliction, which I should have supposed a savage to be incapable of
feeling. He gave some orders to his men, in a language which I did not
comprehend, and I was immediately carried into a hut, and carefully
waited on by several women. I was ill a long time, but every day my
warrior came to visit me, and gradually I picked up enough of the Basuto
language to exchange a few sentences with him. I soon perceived the
light in which he viewed me, and it was not unwelcome--strange as such
an idea would have appeared to me a few weeks before. But I was worn
out by harsh usage, he alone having shown me kindness; and my utter
helplessness made me inclined to lean on any friendly arm. He was, too,
one of the noblest and most generous characters I have ever met with,
and his instinctive delicacy of feeling rendered him all the more
attractive in my eyes. I consented to be his wife, conditionally on his
taking no others, and to this he readily agreed, for, I believe, no
woman but myself ever had any charm for him.

"We were married according to the Basuto forms; but at my desire we also
recited the vow of husband and wife, according to the marriage service
of the English Church, and for ten years lived happily together. I
should mention that I found the medical knowledge I had acquired in my
girlhood of the greatest benefit to my newly adopted countrymen.
Several times, when epidemic fevers, common to this country, broke out,
I was successful in treating them, and my husband's authority enabled me
to enforce regulations, which otherwise I could not have induced the
people to observe. When my husband was killed, some fifteen years ago,
by the sudden fall of a tree, the tribe insisted on making me their
Queen; and nothing has ever seriously disturbed the prosperity of my
reign.