king up into the star-spangled sky. She turned
towards us; her grave old face, as she did so, lit up by the lamp-light
from within. "_My Frenchman_!" she answered, with a look of strong
contempt. "It is an old tale, that, which had better been left untold.
I hate the name of Frenchman. I come of Huguenot blood myself, Meneer,"
she continued, addressing me, "my father was a Joubert. The Huguenots,
I trust, were a very different people. Sooner than think myself akin to
such a race as that little dressed-up _baviaan_ (baboon) my husband has
been telling you of, I would disown my own blood. But, indeed, though
some of us have Huguenot names, we are all good Dutchmen in South Africa
nowadays. You English and we, Meneer, are not always the best of
friends; but at least you are men, and not apes in clothes like Pierre
Cellois. Come in now, and have a _soupje_ [A drink] before you go to
bed."

Pierre Cellois, as I happened to learn since, has long been dust. He
became a shining light in his own country, wrote a book, and is still
referred to as "that great explorer and hunter."

Stout Cornelis Van Vuuren and his good vrouw, too, have lain for some
years in their quiet graves. I sometimes wonder if they and the little
Frenchman have met and settled their differences in the silent land.

CHAPTER TEN.

THE GREAT SECRET.

"And ever with unconquerable will,
Bearing her burden, toward one distant star
She moves in her desire; and though with pain
She labour, and the goal she dreams be far,
Proud is she in her passionate soul to know
That from her tears, her very sorrows grow
The joy, the hope, the peace of future men."

The speaker, as he finished these lines, recited half to himself, half
to his friend, in a dreamy monotone, gazed again into the dark night sky
above him, and fetched a deep breath--almost a sigh.

"Hullo, Bill!" remarked his friend by the camp-fire, in a brisk tone.
"Breaking out that way again, are you? I haven't heard poetry from
you--of that sort--for weeks. I suppose all the hunting and hard work
lately has knocked the stuffing out of you. A day's rest, and you burst
into song again. Who's your author? I don't seem to know him. Not
Tennyson, is it?"

"No, old chap," returned Bill, "it isn't. It's a new man--Lawrence
Binyon--and he's got some mettle in him. I think that image of his of
our poor old earth staggering along with her load to some far-off goal,
still, am