barely
audible as to be almost inarticulate. And as he left her and went out
to find his horse and see about saddling up, it was with a vague
misgiving that the loose coil, to which he had made allusion in his own
mind, had, within the last few moments, very perceptibly tightened.

We made use just above of the expression "under the circumstances." The
"circumstances" were, that by that time this cautious, and cynical and
experienced man of the world was deeply, devotedly, and entirely in love
with Aletta De la Rey.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

JELF--CIVIL COMMISSIONER.

Nicholas Andrew Jelf was Civil Commissioner and Resident Magistrate for
the town and division of Schalkburg.

In person he was a tall, middle-aged, rather good-looking man, with dark
hair, and a grizzled, well-trimmed moustache, and whose general
appearance fostered an idea which constituted one of his favourite
weaknesses--that he resembled a retired military man. When mistaken for
such openly, he positively beamed; and more than one shrewd rogue got
the benefit of the doubt, or obtained material mitigation of the penalty
due to his misdeeds, by appealing, with well-feigned ignorance, to the
occupant of the Bench as "Colonel." By disposition he was easy-going
and good-natured enough, and bore the reputation among his brother Civil
servants of being something of a duffer.

By these the magistracy of Schalkburg was regarded as anything but a
plum. It was very remote, the district large, and peopled almost
entirely by Dutch farmers. The town itself was a great many miles from
the nearest railway station; moreover, it was a dull little hole, with
the limited ideas and pettifogging interests common to up-country
townships. It boasted a large Dutch Reformed church--an unsightly,
whitewashed parallelogram with staring, weather-beaten windows--item
about a dozen stores, a branch of the Standard Bank, and two "hotels,"
designed to afford board and lodging, of a kind, to such of the
storekeepers' clerks or bank clerks--to whom means, or inclination or
opportunity, denied the advantages and felicities of the connubial
state, for a stranger was an exceeding rarity. Half of its houses were
untenanted, save for a few days on the occasion of the quarterly
_Nachtmaal_ [The Lord's Supper] when the township would be filled with a
great multitude of Boers and their families from far and near, those who
did not own or hire houses, camping with their waggons on t