way
in which we can help is to be quiet and to attend to our own business."

"_Oh, goeije_! What are you giving those children such a scolding
about, father?" chimed in a cheery voice, whose owner came bustling out
on to the stoep.

Stephanus De la Rey turned his head, with a smile.

"I am giving them a little good advice," he said, relighting his pipe.
"And I don't think I've ever given them any bad. Have I, boys?"

"No, Pa," they answered, meaning it, too, but not sorry that their
mother had come to the rescue: yet profoundly impressed by the stern
earnestness of the paternal expostulation.

"Here come people," said Stephanus, gliding easily from the subject,
which he had no wish to prolong. "Can you make them out, Cornelis?"

"I think so," replied the youth, shading his eyes, and gazing at two
distant but rapidly approaching horsemen. "One is Adrian, and the
other--I believe it's an Englishman from the way he holds his feet in
the stirrups. _Ja_--it is. It must be Colvin Kershaw."

"Is it?"

"Where?"

And the utterers of both queries came forth on to the stoep, causing
their brothers to break into a splutter of mirth. The younger of the
two girls took after her mother. She was short and dark, and rather too
squat for her seventeen years, but had fine eyes. The other, who was a
year older, was taller, fair and blue-eyed, and rather pretty.

"Which _is_ it, Andrina?" whispered Jan to this one mischievously. "The
Englishman, of course! You all go mad over him."

"Do we? Who's `we,' and who is `all,' I should like to know?" retorted
Andrina, with a toss of her golden head.

"I know I don't," said the other girl. "Why, we fight too much for
that. But I like fighting him. I wish all Englishmen were like him
though. He is so full of fun."

Stephanus welcomed both arrivals with his usual geniality, not allowing
the fact that he disapproved of his nephew politically to make the
slightest difference in his manner. The young Boer, however, whose
self-confidence was lacking in the presence of one to whom he looked up
so much, felt somewhat constrained. However, his message had to be
delivered, so he jerked out:

"The Patriot will be here at sundown, Oom Stephanus."

"So?"

"He addressed us for nearly three hours at Jan Grobbelaar's two nights
ago. _Ja_, it was magnificent to hear him," went on the speaker, losing
himself in his enthusiasm for The Cause. "I wish you would hear him,
Oom St