smissed it. No, she had
not come to that! Her eyes wandering round the kennel lit upon
Jantje's assegais and sticks in the corner, and these gave her another
inspiration. Jantje should do the deed.

John had told her one day when they were sitting together in "The
Palatial" at Pretoria the whole of Jantje's awful story about the
massacre of his relatives by Frank Muller twenty years before, of which,
indeed, she already knew something. It would be most fitting that this
fiend should be removed from the face of the earth by the survivor of
those unfortunates. That would be poetic justice, and justice is so rare
in the world. But the question was, would he do it? The little man was
a wonderful coward, that she knew, and had a great terror of Boers, and
especially of Frank Muller.

"Jantje," she whispered, stooping towards the bee-hole.

"Yah, missie," answered a hoarse voice outside, and next second the
Hottentot's monkey-like face came creeping into the ring of light,
followed by his even more monkey-like form.

"Sit down there, Jantje. I am lonely here and want to talk."

He obeyed her, with a grin. "What shall we talk about, missie? Shall I
tell you a story of the time when the beasts could speak, as I used to
do years and years ago?"

"No, Jantje. Tell me about that stick--that long stick with a knob at
the top, and the nicks cut on it. Has it not something to do with Frank
Muller?"

The Hottentot's face instantly grew evil. "Yah, yah, missie!" he said,
reaching out a skinny claw and seizing the stick. "Look, this big notch,
that is my father, Baas Frank shot him; and this next notch, that is my
mother, Baas Frank shot her; and this next notch, that is my uncle, an
old, old man, Baas Frank shot him also. And these small notches, they
are when he has beaten me--yes, and other things too. And now I will
make more notches, one for the house that is burnt, and one for the old
Baas Croft, my own Baas, whom he is going to shoot, and one for
Missie Bessie." And Jantje drew from his side his large white-handled
hunting-knife and began to cut them then and there upon the hard wood of
the stick.

Jess knew this knife of old. It was Jantje's peculiar treasure, the
chief joy of his narrow little heart. He had brought it from a Zulu for
a heifer which her uncle had given him in lieu of half a year's wage.
The Zulu had it from a half-caste whose kraal was beyond Delagoa Bay.
As a matter of fact it was a Somali knife, manu