g ringed moon arose throwing
an unholy and distorted light upon the blackness that seemed to shudder
in her rays as though with a prescience of the advancing terror. On
crept the mud-coloured columns, and on above them, and resting on them,
came the muttering storm. The cart was quite close to the river now, and
they could distinguish the murmur of its waters. To their left stood
a koppie, covered with white, slab-like stones, on which the sickly
moonbeams danced.

"Look, John, look!" cried Jess with an hysterical laugh; "it is like
a huge graveyard, and the dark shadows between are the ghosts of the
buried."

"Nonsense," said John sternly; "why do you talk such rubbish?"

He felt that her mind had lost its balance, and, what is more, his own
nerves were shaken. Therefore he was naturally the angrier with her, and
the more determined to be perfectly matter-of-fact.

Jess made no answer, but she was frightened, she could not tell why. The
scene resembled that of some awful dream, or of one of Dore's pictures
come to life. No doubt, also, the near presence of the tempest exercised
a physical effect upon her. Even the wearied horses snorted and shook
themselves uneasily.

They crept over the ridge of a wave of land, and the wheels rolled
softly on the grass.

"Why, we are off the road!" shouted John to Muller, who was still
guiding them, fifteen or twenty paces ahead.

"All right! all right! it is a short cut to the ford!" he called in
answer, and his voice rang strange and hollow through the great depths
of the silence.

Below them, a hundred yards away, the light, such as it was, gleamed
faintly upon the wide surface of the river. Another five minutes and
they were on the bank, but in the gathering doom they could not see the
opposite shore.

"Turn to the left!" shouted Muller; "the ford is a few yards up. It is
too deep here for the horses."

John turned accordingly, and followed Muller's horse some three hundred
yards up the bank till they came to a spot where the water ran with an
angry music, and there was a great swirl of eddies.

"Here is the place," said Muller; "you must make haste through. The
house is just the other side, and it will be better to get there before
the tempest breaks."

"It is all very well," said John, "but I cannot see an inch before me; I
don't know where to drive."

"Drive straight ahead; the water is not more than three feet deep, and
there are no rocks."

"I am not going