to me through the wall, with a spirit like a
boy's.

"'I've begun, at any rate,' he called out, 'and that's a
great thing. If I go as far forward as I've gone back, I
shall be satisfied. Where did you say the comb was?'

"And all through supper he chattered in the same vein,
rejoicing in the muscles that ached with work and in his
capacity to do more and bear more than the Kafirs who were
his rivals.

For me, I was pleased enough and thankful to hear the heart
of him thus vocal, and to mark the man I knew of old and
chose to be my mate come to light in this laborer, new from
his toil.

"We did not sit late that night, for, with all his elation
and reawakened spirits. Kornel was weary to the honest bone
of him, and swayed with sleep as he stood on his feet. He
rolled into my clean, cool sheets with a grunt of utter
satisfaction. 'This is comfort indeed,' he said drowsily,
as I leaned over him, and he was asleep before I had
answered.

"At daylight he rose and went forth to the spruit again,
and there all day he labored earnestly. Each time that I
looked towards him I saw his back bent and his arms
plunging in the mud, while the rows of wet bricks grew
longer and multiplied. I heard him whistling at it,--some
English melody he had gathered long before at a
waapenschauw,--with a light heart, the while he was up to
his knees in the dirty water, with the mud plastered all
over him.

"By and by I went down to the bank and asked him how he
did. He straightened himself, grimacing humorously at the
stiffness of his back, and answered me cheerily.

"'Tomorrow old Pagan will come down and pay for what I have
done,' he said. I think he will be surprised at the amount.
His Kafirs have no such appetite for it as I.' And he
laughed.

"It was a dreadful business he had taken in hand, and work
hard beyond believing. The boxes stood in a pile above the
stream, and each had to be reached down as one was filled,
and as soon as two were full Kornel must climb the bank to
set them aside. When all were full, they had to be turned
out on the level ground, and all this, as you can see,
meant that he must scramble up and down in the heavy mud,
taxing every spring in his poor body. Yet he toiled
ceaselessly, attacking the job with a kind of light-hearted
desperation that made nothing of its hardships, bringing to
it a tough and unconquerable joy in the mere effort, which
drove him ever like a spur.

"As I watched him delving,