and the rocks cast shadows, on it
ran; the little hands clinched, the little heart beating, the eyes fixed
always ahead.

It was not far to run now. Only the narrow path between the high rocks
and the river.

At last she came to the end of it, and stood for an instant. Before her
lay the plain, and the red farmhouse, so near, that if persons had been
walking there you might have seen them in the moonlight. She clasped her
hands. "Yes, I will tell them, I will tell them!" she said; "I am almost
there!" She ran forward again, then hesitated. She shaded her eyes from
the moonlight, and looked. Between her and the farmhouse there were
three figures moving over the low bushes.

In the sheeny moonlight you could see how they moved on, slowly and
furtively; the short one, and the one in light clothes, and the one in
dark.

"I cannot help them now!" she cried, and sank down on the ground, with
her little hands clasped before her.

*****

"Awake, awake!" said the farmer's wife; "I hear a strange noise;
something calling, calling, calling!"

The man rose, and went to the window.

"I hear it also," he said; "surely some jackal's at the sheep. I will
load my gun and go and see."

"It sounds to me like the cry of no jackal," said the woman; and when he
was gone she woke her daughter.

"Come, let us go and make a fire, I can sleep no more," she said; "I
have heard a strange thing tonight. Your father said it was a jackal's
cry, but no jackal cries so. It was a child's voice, and it cried,
'Master, master, wake!'"

The women looked at each other; then they went to the kitchen, and made
a great fire; and they sang psalms all the while.

At last the man came back; and they asked him, "What have you seen?"
"Nothing," he said, "but the sheep asleep in their kraals, and the
moonlight on the walls. And yet, it did seem to me," he added, "that
far away near the krantz by the river, I saw three figures moving. And
afterwards--it might have been fancy--I thought I heard the cry again;
but since that, all has been still there."

*****

Next day a navvy had returned to the railway works.

"Where have you been so long?" his comrades asked.

"He keeps looking over his shoulder," said one, "as though he thought he
should see something there."

"When he drank his grog today," said another, "he let it fall, and
looked round."

Next day, a small old Bushman, and a Hottentot, in ragged yellow
trousers, were at a wayside cantee