all self-control flung to the winds. I
was to see this amazing man in a further part. For he now became a
friendly and rational companion. He kept his horse at an easy walk,
and talked to me as if we were two friends out for a trip together.
Perhaps he had talked thus to Arcoll, the half-caste who drove his
Cape-cart.

The wooded bluff above Machudi's glen showed far in front. He told me
the story of the Machudi war, which I knew already, but he told it as a
saga. There had been a stratagem by which one of the Boer leaders--a
Grobelaar, I think--got some of his men into the enemy's camp by hiding
them in a captured forage wagon.

'Like the Trojan horse,' I said involuntarily.

'Yes,' said my companion, 'the same old device,' and to my amazement he
quoted some lines of Virgil.

'Do you understand Latin?' he asked.

I told him that I had some slight knowledge of the tongue, acquired at
the university of Edinburgh. Laputa nodded. He mentioned the name of
a professor there, and commented on his scholarship.

'O man!' I cried, 'what in God's name are you doing in this business?
You that are educated and have seen the world, what makes you try to
put the clock back? You want to wipe out the civilization of a
thousand years, and turn us all into savages. It's the more shame to
you when you know better.'

'You misunderstand me,' he said quietly. 'It is because I have sucked
civilization dry that I know the bitterness of the fruit. I want a
simpler and better world, and I want that world for my own people. I
am a Christian, and will you tell me that your civilization pays much
attention to Christ? You call yourself a patriot? Will you not give
me leave to be a patriot in turn?'

'If you are a Christian, what sort of Christianity is it to deluge the
land with blood?'

'The best,' he said. 'The house must be swept and garnished before the
man of the house can dwell in it. You have read history, Such a
purging has descended on the Church at many times, and the world has
awakened to a new hope. It is the same in all religions. The temples
grow tawdry and foul and must be cleansed, and, let me remind you, the
cleanser has always come out of the desert.'

I had no answer, being too weak and forlorn to think. But I fastened
on his patriotic plea.

'Where are the patriots in your following? They are all red Kaffirs
crying for blood and plunder. Supposing you were Oliver Cromwell you
could make nothing