n, I suppose?"

"No," said John, "a Captain of the English Army."

"Oh, a _rooibaatje_ (red jacket). Well, I don't wonder at your taking to
farming after the Zulu war."

"I don't quite understand you," said John, rather coldly.

"Oh, no offence, Captain, no offence. I only meant that you
_rooibaatjes_ did not come very well out of that war. I was there with
Piet Uys, and it was a sight, I can tell you. A Zulu had only to show
himself at night and one would see your regiments _skreck_ (stampede)
like a span of oxen when they wind a lion. And then they'd fire--ah,
they did fire--anyhow, anywhere, but mostly at the clouds, there was no
stopping them; and so, you see, I thought that you would like to turn
your sword into a ploughshare, as the Bible says--but no offence, I'm
sure--no offence."

All this while John Niel, being English to his backbone, and cherishing
the reputation of his profession almost as dearly as his own honour,
was boiling with inward wrath, which was all the fiercer because he knew
there was some truth in the Boer's insults. He had the sense, however,
to keep his temper--outwardly, at any rate.

"I was not in the Zulu war, Mr. Muller," he said, and just then old
Silas Croft rode up, and the conversation dropped.

Mr. Frank Muller stopped to dinner and far on into the afternoon, for
his lost ox seemed to have entirely slipped his memory. There he sat
close to the fair Bessie, smoking and drinking gin-water, and talking
with great volubility in English sprinkled with Boer-Dutch terms that
John Niel did not understand, and gazing at the young lady in a manner
which John somehow found unpleasant. Of course it was no affair of his,
and he had no interest in the matter, but for all that he thought this
remarkable-looking Dutchman exceedingly disagreeable. At last, indeed,
he could bear it no longer, and hobbled out for a little walk with Jess,
who, in her abrupt way, offered to show him the garden.

"You don't like that man?" she said to him, as they went slowly down the
slope in front of the house.

"No; do you?"

"I think," replied Jess quietly, but with much emphasis, "that he is
the most odious man I ever saw--and the most curious." Then she relapsed
into silence, only broken now and again by an occasional remark about
the flowers and trees.

Half an hour afterwards, when they arrived again at the top of the
slope, Mr. Muller was just riding off down the avenue of blue gums. By
the verandah