from her hold. Her distorted mouth and
blazing eyes were close to the white young face. She could have spat upon
it. But she snarled at her three words ... no more, and passed her, and
got into the waggon.

"Halloa, there!" said Bough, coming forward threateningly, "what you
rowing about, eh?" But no one answered. The girl had fled to the
boulder-cairn, and the woman sat silent in the waggon, until the weary,
goaded teams moved on, and the transport-train of heavy, broad-beamed
vehicles lumbered away.

But the little figure on the cairn of boulders covering the dust of the
bosom from whence it had first drunk life sat there immovable until the
sun went down, pondering.

"_Missis now, eh!_"

What did those three words mean?

Then Bough called her, and she had to run. She served as waitress of the
bar that day, and the men who drove or rode by and stopped for drinks,
chatting in the dirty saloon, or sitting in the bare front room, with the
Dutch stove, and the wooden forms and tables in it, that they called the
coffee-room, to discuss matters relative to the sale of cattle, or sheep,
or merchandise, stared at her, and several made her coarse compliments.
She refused to touch the loathly-smelling liquor they offered her. Her
heart beat like a little terrified bird's. And she was horribly conscious
of those light eyes of Bough's following, following her, with that
inscrutable look.

When the crowd had thinned he came to her. He caught her arm, and pulled
her near him, and said between his teeth:

"You will sleep in the mistress's room to-night."

Then he went away chuckling to himself, thinking of that frightened look
in her eyes. Later, he went out on horseback, and did not return.

The slatternly bedchamber, with its red turkey twill window-curtains and
cheap gaudy wallpaper, which had belonged to the ruddled woman with the
bleached hair, was a palace to the little one. But she could not breathe
there. Late that night she rose from the big feather bed, and unfastened
the inner window shutters, and drew the cotton blind and opened the
window, though the paint had stuck, and looked out upon the veld. The
great stars throbbed in the purple velvet darkness overhead. The falling
dew wetted the hand she stretched out into the cool night air. She drew
back the hand and touched her cheek with it, and started, for the fresh,
cool, fragrant touch seemed like that of some other hand whose touch she
once had known. She th