ove
to pray. Her mind was an eddying blackness shot with the livid glare of
electric fires. Her faith rocked like a palm in the tempest; her soul was
tossed across raging billows like a vessel in the grip of the cyclone.
Being so great, she suffered greatly; being so strong, she had strong
passions to wrestle with and to subdue. Awhile, like that other Mary, who,
unlike her, was a fleshly sinner, she strove, rent as it seemed to her, by
seven devils. And then she fell down prone at her Master's nail-pierced
Feet, and found there at last the healing gift of tears.

XII

Emigration Jane, the new under-housemaid on trial at the Convent, had a
gathering on the top joint of the first finger of the hand that burned to
wear Walt Slabberts' betrothal-ring, and the abscess being ripe for the
lancet, she had an extra afternoon in the week to get it attended to. She
found Walt waiting at the street-corner under the lamp-post, and her heart
bounded, for by their punctuality at the trysting-place you know whether
they are serious in their intentions towards you, or merely carrying on,
and her other young men had invariably kept her waiting. This new one was
class, and no mistake.

"Watto, Walt!" she hailed joyously.

Her Walt uttered a guttural greeting in the Taal, and displayed
uncared-for and moss-grown teeth in the smile that Emigration Jane found
strangely fascinating. To the eye that did not survey Walt through the
rose-coloured glasses of affection he appeared merely as a
high-shouldered, slab-sided young Boer, whose cheap store-clothes bagged
where they did not crease, and whose boots curled upwards at the toes with
mediaeval effect. His cravat, of a lively green, patterned with yellow
rockets, warred with his tallowy complexion; his drab-coloured hair hung
in clumps; he was growing a beard that sprouted in reddish tufts from the
tough hide of his jaws, leaving bare patches between, like the karroo. The
Slabberts was an assistant-clerk at the Gueldersdorp Railway-Station
Parcels-Office, and his widowed mother, the Tante Slabberts, took in
washing from Uitlanders, who are mad enough to change their underwear with
frequency, and did the cleaning at the Gerevormed Kerk at Rustenberg, a
duty which involves the emptying of spittoons. Her boy was her joy and
pride.

Young Walt, the true Boer's son that he was, did not entertain the idea of
marrying Emigration Jane. The child of the Amalekite might never be
brought ho