, "if the old _volk_ are right after all, and if
there is a God." Frank Muller was sufficiently impregnated with modern
ideas to be a free-thinker. "It almost seems like it," he went on, "else
how did it come that the one bullet passed under his belly and the other
just touched his head without harming him? I aimed carefully enough too,
and I could make the shot nineteen times out of twenty and not miss.
Bah, a God! I snap my fingers at Him. Chance is the only god. Chance
blows men about like the dead grass, till death comes down like the
veldt fire and devours them. But there are men who ride chance as one
rides a young colt--ay, who turn its headlong rushing and rearing to
their own ends--who let it fly hither and thither till it is weary, and
then canter it along the road that leads to triumph. I, Frank Muller, am
one of those men. I never fail in the end. I will kill that Englishman.
Perhaps I will kill old Silas Croft and the Hottentot too. Bah! they
do not know what is coming. I know; I have helped to lay the mine; and
unless they bend to my will I shall be the one to fire it. I will kill
them all, and I will take Mooifontein, and then I will marry Bessie. She
will fight against it, but that will make it all the sweeter. She loves
that _rooibaatje_; I know it; and I will kiss her over his dead body.
Ah! there are the carts. I don't see the Captain. Driven home, I
suppose, on account of the shock to his nerves. Well, I must talk to
those fools. Lord, what fools they are with their chatter about the
'land,' and the '_verdomde Britische Gouvernment_.' They don't know what
is good for them. Silly sheep, with Frank Muller for a shepherd! Ay, and
they shall have Frank Muller for a president one day, and I will rule
them too. Bah! I hate the English; but I am glad that I am half
English for all that, for that is where I get the brains! But these
people--fools, fools! Well, I shall pipe and they shall dance!"

"Baas," said Jantje to John, as they were driving homewards, "Baas Frank
shot at you."

"How do you know that?" asked John.

"I saw him. He was stalking the wounded bull, and not looking for a calf
at all. There was no calf. He was just going to fire at the wounded bull
when he turned and saw you, and he knelt down on one knee and covered
you, and before I could do anything he fired, and then when he saw that
he had missed you he fired again, and I don't know how it was that he
did not kill you, for he is a wo