It will be
dull at the farm without you."

"You will have Bessie to talk to," she answered, turning her face to the
window, and affecting to watch the inspanning of the post-cart in the
yard on to which it looked.

"Captain Niel!" she said suddenly.

"Yes?"

"Mind you look after Bessie while I am away. Listen! I am going to tell
you something. You know Frank Muller?"

"Yes, I know him, and a very disagreeable fellow he is."

"Well, he threatened Bessie the other day, and he is a man who is quite
capable of carrying out a threat. I can't tell you anything more about
it, but I want you to promise me to protect Bessie if any occasion for
it should arise. I do not know that it will, but it might. Will you
promise?"

"Of course I will; I would do a great deal more than that if you asked
me to, Jess," he answered tenderly, for now that she was going away he
felt curiously drawn towards her, and was anxious to show it.

"Never mind me," she said, with an impatient little movement. "Bessie
is sweet enough and lovely enough to be looked after for her own sake, I
should think."

Before he could say any more, in came Bessie herself, saying that the
driver was waiting, and they went out to see her sister off.

"Don't forget your promise," Jess whispered to him, bending down as he
helped her into the cart, so low that her lips almost touched him, and
her breath rested for a second on his cheek like the ghost of a kiss.

In another moment the sisters had embraced each other, tenderly enough;
the driver had sounded once more on his awful bugle, and away went the
cart at full gallop, bearing with it Jess, two other passengers, and
her Majesty's mails. John and Bessie stood for a moment watching its
mad career, as it fled splashing and banging down the straggling street
towards the wide plains beyond; then they turned to enter the inn again
and prepare for their homeward drive. At that moment, an old Boer, named
Hans Coetzee, with whom John was already slightly acquainted, came
up, and, extending an enormously big and thick hand, bid them "_Gooden
daag._" Hans Coetzee was a very favourable specimen of the better sort
of Boer, and really came more or less up to the ideal picture that is so
often drawn of that "simple pastoral people." He was a very large, stout
man, with a fine open face and a pair of kindly eyes. John, looking at
him, guessed that he could not weigh less than seventeen stone, and that
estimate was well wit