county, comes out of church on the first
Sunday in May accompanied by his wife, the stateliest matron in the
country-side, and some three or four children, boys and girls together,
as healthy as they are handsome. After a glance at a certain grave that
lies near to the chancel door, they walk homewards across the budding
park in the sweet spring afternoon, till, a hundred yards or more from
the door of Outram Hall, they pause at the gates of a dwelling known as
"The Kraal," shaped like a beehive, fashioned of straw and sticks, and
built by the hands of Otter alone.

Basking in the sunshine in front of this hut sits the dwarf himself,
cutting broom-sticks with a knife out of the straightest of a bundle of
ash saplings that lie beside him. He is dressed in a queer mixture of
native and European costume, but otherwise time has wrought no change in
him.

"Greeting, Baas," he says as Leonard comes up. "Is Baas Wallace here
yet?"

"No, he will be down in time for dinner. Mind that you are there to
wait, Otter."

"I shall not be late, Baas, on this day of all days."

"Otter," cries a little maid, "you should not make brown-sticks on
Sunday, it is very wrong."

The dwarf grins by way of answer, then speaks to Leonard in a tongue
that none but he can understand.

"What did I tell you many years ago, Baas?" he says. "Did I not tell
you that by this way or by that you should win the wealth, and that
the great kraal across the water should be yours again, and that the
children of strangers should wander there no more? See, it has come
true," and he points to the happy group of youngsters. "_Wow!_ I, otter,
who am a fool in most things, have proved to be the best of prophets.
Yet I will rest content and prophesy no more, lest I should lose my name
for wisdom."

A few hours later and dinner is over in the larger hall. All the
servants have gone except Otter, who dressed in a white smock stands
behind his master's chair. There is no company present save Mr. Wallace,
who has just returned from another African expedition, and sits smiling
and observant, his eyeglass fixed in his eye as of yore. Juanna is
arrayed in full evening dress, however, and a great star ruby blazes
upon her breast.

"Why have you got the red stone on to-night, mother?" asks her eldest
son Thomas, who with his two sisters has come down to desert.

"Hush, dear," she answers, as Otter advances to that stand on which the
Bible is chained, holding a glas