he came to his own
place ten miles away. Twice the horse fell in the darkness, for there
was no moon, the second time throwing him heavily, but he only dragged
it up with an oath, and springing into the saddle again fled on as
before.

Thus the man who did not hesitate to plot and to execute the cruel
slaughter of unoffending men cowered beneath the fancied echo of a dead
woman's voice! Truly human nature is full of contradictions.

When the thunder of the horse's hoofs grew faint Jantje emerged from one
of his hiding-places, and, throwing himself down in the centre of the
dusty road, kicked and rolled with delight, shaking all the while with
an inward joy to which his habits of caution would not permit him to
give audible vent. "His mother's voice, his mother's words," he quoted
to himself. "How should he know that Jantje remembers the old woman's
voice--ay, and the words that the devil in her spoke too? Hee! hee!
hee!"

Finally he departed to eat his supper of beef, which he had cut off
an unfortunate ox which that morning had expired of a mysterious
complication of diseases, filled with a happy sense that he had not
lived that day in vain.

Bessie fled without stopping till she reached the orange-trees in front
of the verandah, where, reassured by the lights from the windows, she
paused to consider. Not that she was troubled by Jantje's mysterious
howling; indeed, she was too preoccupied to give it a second thought.
What she debated was whether she should say anything about her encounter
with Frank Muller. Young ladies are not, as a rule, too fond of
informing their husbands or lovers that somebody has kissed them; first,
because they know it will force them to make a disturbance and possibly
to place themselves in a ridiculous position; and, secondly, because
they fear lest suspicious man might take the story with a grain of salt,
and suggest even that they, the kissed, were themselves to blame. Both
these reasons presented themselves to Bessie's practical mind, also a
further one, namely, that he had not kissed her after all. So on a rapid
review of the whole case she came to the decision to say nothing to John
about it, and only enough to her uncle to make him forbid Frank Muller
the house--an unnecessary precaution, as the reader will remember. Then,
after pausing for a few seconds to pick a branch of orange blossom and
to recover herself generally, which, not being hysterically inclined,
she very soon did,