died
too. So when _Oom_ Jacob came back the next year all the oxen were gone.
He was very angry with my father, and beat him with a yoke-strap till he
was all blood, and though we showed him the bones of the oxen, he said
that we had stolen them and sold them.

"Now _Oom_ Jacob had a beautiful span of black oxen that he loved like
children. Sixteen of them there were, and they would come up to the yoke
when he called them and put down their heads of themselves. They were
tame as dogs. These oxen were thin when they came down, but in two
months they grew fat and began to want to trek about as oxen do. At this
time there was a Basutu, one of Sequati's people, resting in our hut,
for he had hurt his foot with a thorn. When _Oom_ Jacob found that the
Basutu was there he was very angry, for he said that all Basutus were
thieves. So my father told the Basutu that the Baas said that he must go
away, and he went that night. Next morning the span of black oxen were
gone too. The kraal-gate was down, and they had gone. We hunted all day,
but we could not find them. Then _Oom_ Jacob went mad with rage, and
the young Baas Frank told him that one of the Kafir boys had said to him
that he had heard my father sell them to the Basutu for sheep which he
was to pay to us in the summer. It was a lie, but Baas Frank hated my
father because of something about a woman--a Zulu girl.

"Next morning when we were asleep, just at daybreak, _Oom_ Jacob Muller
and Baas Frank and two Kafirs came into the hut and pulled us out, the
old man my uncle, my father, my mother, and myself, and tied us up to
four mimosa-trees with buffalo-hide reims. Then the Kafirs went away,
and _Oom_ Jacob asked my father where the cattle were, and my father
told him that he did not know. Then _Oom_ Jacob took off his hat and
said a prayer to the Big Man in the sky, and when he had done Baas Frank
came up with a gun and stood quite close and shot my father dead, and he
fell forward and hung quiet over the reim, his head touching his feet.
Then he loaded the gun again and shot the old man my uncle, and he
slipped down dead, and his hands stuck up in the air against the reim.
Next he shot my mother, but the bullet did not kill her, and cut the
reim, and she ran away, and he ran after her and killed her. When that
was done he came back to shoot me; but I was young then, and did not
know that it is better to be dead than to live like a dog, and I cried
and prayed for mercy