; but if she waded in the water in the bed of the river
they would not be able to find her footmarks; and she would hide, there
where the rocks and the kopjes were.

So she stood up and walked towards the river. The water in the river
was low; just a line of silver in the broad bed of sand, here and there
broadening into a pool. She stepped into it, and bathed her feet in the
delicious cold water. Up and up the stream she walked, where it rattled
over the pebbles, and past where the farmhouse lay; and where the rocks
were large she leaped from one to the other. The night wind in her face
made her strong--she laughed. She had never felt such night wind before.
So the night smells to the wild bucks, because they are free! A free
thing feels as a chained thing never can.

At last she came to a place where the willows grew on each side of the
river, and trailed their long branches on the sandy bed. She could not
tell why, she could not tell the reason, but a feeling of fear came over
her.

On the left bank rose a chain of kopjes and a precipice of rocks.
Between the precipice and the river bank there was a narrow path covered
by the fragments of fallen rock. And upon the summit of the precipice a
kippersol tree grew, whose palm-like leaves were clearly cut out against
the night sky. The rocks cast a deep shadow, and the willow trees, on
either side of the river. She paused, looked up and about her, and then
ran on, fearful.

"What was I afraid of? How foolish I have been!" she said, when she came
to a place where the trees were not so close together. And she stood
still and looked back and shivered.

At last her steps grew wearier and wearier. She was very sleepy now, she
could scarcely lift her feet. She stepped out of the river-bed. She only
saw that the rocks about her were wild, as though many little kopjes had
been broken up and strewn upon the ground, lay down at the foot of an
aloe, and fell asleep.

*****

But, in the morning, she saw what a glorious place it was. The rocks
were piled on one another, and tossed this way and that. Prickly
pears grew among them, and there were no less than six kippersol trees
scattered here and there among the broken kopjes. In the rocks there
were hundreds of homes for the conies, and from the crevices wild
asparagus hung down. She ran to the river, bathed in the clear cold
water, and tossed it over her head. She sang aloud. All the songs she
knew were sad, so she could not