ltiplied. Jacoba Steyn's stock always
had luck, and throve handsomely; and so at the age of thirty-seven she
was still looked upon as an excellent match. But Jacoba had throughout
her life steadily refused all offers of marriage. It was very
exasperating to her family in her younger days, and a complete mystery
to the Boer men who knew little of her earlier life. Gradually it
dawned upon the minds of these slow-witted Waterberg Dutchmen that in
real sober truth Jacoba Steyn was not to be won, that she was vowed to
spinsterhood, and that some unaccountable attachment of her girlish days
prevented her from ever accepting another man's attentions.

When she had reached the age of forty, her youngest brother, Hans, with
whom and whose family she had, since the death of her parents, always
lived, ceased to urge upon her to take a husband. It was hopeless, and,
after all, Jacoba's cattle, goats, and savings would be a great help to
the children at some future time. And so, at the age of forty-seven,
Jacoba had outlived the attentions of bucolic swains, and the strong and
even forcible recommendations of her own family, and was left to pursue
unmolested the tenor of her quiet existence. She helped Lijsbet, her
brother Hans's wife, with her unwieldy family, performed more than her
share of the household duties, and wore always a look of quiet happiness
upon her broad, pleasant face. Twice or thrice a year she trekked with
the family to _Nachtmaal_ (Communion) at Pretoria. After all, Jacoba
was a woman, and even she, weaned though she was from the hopes and
fears and commoner frets of the world, could not find it in her heart to
deny herself the pleasure of a few days in the Boer capital, the sight
of shops and _winkels_ [stores] and English folk, the joys of attendance
in the Dutch Reformed Church, and some little intercourse with the
_predikant_ (pastor). The _predikant_ knew something of Jacoba's
strange story; he was a man of some refinement and much sympathy; and it
did the quiet Dutchwoman good to have a talk with the minister she had
known so long. Sometimes on the calm Sunday evenings up in Waterberg,
when the cattle and goats are kraaled for the night and the still veldt
lies golden beneath the kiss of sunset, when the bush _koorhaan_
[bustards] are playing their half-hour of strange aerial pranks and
evolutions yonder, just outside the dark fringe of bush, Jacoba wanders
from the low homestead and sits up abo