a passing traveller and invite him to try the door.

They have only two styles of roofing their dwellings--either the
old-fashioned gable roof, or the still older kind of "lean-to," the latter
being nothing but a flat top, high at the front and running lower towards
the back, in order that the rain water may carry off rapidly. They paint
their doors and windows a sober reddish brown, for your true Boer has an
utter contempt for anything gaudy or gay. He leaves that sort of thing to
his nigger servants, who make up for their master's lack of appreciation in
the matter of colour by rigging themselves out in anything that is
startling in the way of contrasts, for if the white master is a Puritan in
such things, the nigger servant, male and female, is a perfect sybarite.

Right opposite where I am sitting a family group, or all that is left of
the family, is sitting, as the custom is at evening, out on the stoep. On
the side nearest me is a young widow. I have made inquiries concerning her.
Her husband was killed fighting against our troops at Graspan. She, poor
thing, is dressed in deepest mourning. Her dress is made of some heavy
black material, and has no touch of white or any colour anywhere to relieve
its sombre shades. On her head she wears a jet black cap, which rises high
and wide, and falls around her neck and shoulders. The cap is fashioned
much after the style of the sun bonnets worn by the peasant women of
Normandy, but hers is black, black as the grave. She has rather a nice
face, a good woman's face, pale and refined by suffering. No one looking at
her can doubt that she has suffered, and suffered as only such women can,
through this brutal, bloody war. I thought of the widows away in our own
land as I looked at her sitting there, so silently and sadly, with her thin
white hands clasped on the black folds of her lap. On one hand I plainly
saw the gold circle shining, which a few months ago had meant so much to
her; now, alas! only the outward and visible sign of all she had been and
of all that she had lost. Behind her the snow-white wall of the house,
sparkling in the red rays of the setting sun; at her feet only the white
slate of the stoep. And well enough I knew that under the proud Empire flag
many a widow as young and as heart-broken as this Dutch girl would watch
the sun go down as hopelessly as she, and I could not help the thought
which sprang to my soul--God's bitter curse rest on the head of the man,