gry.

"I tell you," he cried, "you shall have not one drop of water unless you
swear to leave your husband and come with me! Those are my last words."

"Your last indeed!" echoed Hendrika, in a deep, low voice. Her carbine
went up. The Boer made one dash to disarm her, and in the same instant
her forefinger pressed the trigger and a bullet crashed through
Oosthuysen's brain. He fell forward and lay there in the sand without
another motion, stone-dead.

Scarcely noticing the body, Hendrika went straight to the water _vatje_
for which she had done this terrible act. She lifted it from the hook,
and, exerting all her strength, carried it across to her wagon. Then,
procuring brandy, she mingled water with it, and with a teaspoon poured
some of the mixture between the parched lips of her half-lifeless child.
In ten minutes there were signs of returning consciousness, and
presently Barend opened his eyes. Her child was saved, and the woman's
heart, spite of the deadly horror that was upon her, echoed faint
thanks. She had saved her boy, but at what a price! In half an hour
Barend was so much better that she was able to leave him dozing quietly,
and once more she betook herself to Oosthuysen's camp. The Boer's
Kaffirs had returned, and were standing over the dead body, talking and
gesticulating in an excited way. Hendrika walked straight up to them,
and, first picking up her carbine, said in a firm voice, "Yes, the Baas
is dead. He refused me water, and I shot him. It was my child's life
or his. You had better go on to Inkouane and tell his friends to send
back for the wagon."

The natives, awed by her manner and the words she spoke, slunk away,
and, picking up their blankets and assegais and a little store of water,
struck into the bush, glad to be quit of this terrible woman.

As soon as they had departed, all Hendrika's stock of firmness vanished.
She had been overwrought these forty-eight hours past. Now the tension
had become too great. She knelt beside the dead body of Oosthuysen and
wept in an agony of remorse, pity, and tenderness.

Why had she slain this man, with whom for years she had been associated
in childhood? She remembered, ah! so well, their pleasant homes in
Marico, the fertile valleys, the fair uplands, and the pleasant treks
four times a year to _Nachtmaal_ (communion) at Zeerust. Her tears
flowed afresh. Presently she became calmer, climbed into Oosthuysen's
wagon, and took down a