while he was loading the gun.

"But the Baas only laughed, and said he would teach Hottentots how to
steal cattle, and old _Oom_ Jacob prayed out loud to the Big Man and
said he was very sorry for me, but it was the dear Lord's will. And
then, just as Baas Frank lifted the gun, he dropped it again, for there,
coming softly, softly over the brow of the hill, in and out between the
bushes, were all the sixteen oxen! They had got out in the night and
strayed away into some kloof for a change of pasture, and came back when
they were full and tired of being alone. _Oom_ Jacob turned quite white
and scratched his head, and then fell upon his knees and thanked the
dear Lord for saving my life; and just then the Englishwoman, Baas
Frank's mother, came down from the waggon to see what the firing was at,
and when she saw all the people dead and me weeping, tied to the tree,
and learnt what it was about, she went quite mad, for sometimes she had
a kind heart when she was not drunk, and said that a curse would fall on
them, and that they would all die in blood. And she took a knife and cut
me loose, though Baas Frank wanted to kill me, so that I might tell no
tales; and I ran away, travelling by night and hiding by day, for I was
very much frightened, till I reached Natal, and there I stopped, working
in Natal till this land became English, when Baas Croft hired me to
drive his cart up from Maritzburg; and living by here I found Baas
Frank, looking bigger but just the same except for his beard.

"There, Baas, that is the truth, and all the truth, and that is why
I hate Baas Frank, because he shot my father and mother, and why Baas
Frank hates me, because he cannot forget that he did it and because I
saw him do it, for, as our people say, 'one always hates a man one has
wounded with a spear.'"

Having finished his narrative, the miserable-looking little man picked
up his greasy old felt hat that had a leather strap fixed round the
crown, in which were stuck a couple of frayed ostrich feathers, and
jammed it down over his ears. Then he fell to drawing circles on the
soil with his long toes. His auditors only looked at one another. Such a
ghastly tale seemed to be beyond comment. They never doubted its truth;
the man's way of telling it carried conviction with it; indeed, two of
them at any rate had heard such stories before. Most people have who
live in the wilder parts of South Africa, though they are not all to be
taken for gospe