lay.

During the day all the Boers went away and left them alone. Now that
Frank Muller lay dead there was no thought among them of carrying out
the sentence upon their old neighbour. Besides, there was no warrant for
the execution, even had they desired so to do, for their commandant
died leaving it unsigned. So they held an informal inquest upon their
leader's body, and buried him in the little graveyard that was walled in
on the hill-side at the back of where the house had stood, and planted
with the four red gums, one at each corner. Rather than be at the pains
of hollowing another grave, they buried him in the very place that he
had caused to be dug to receive the body of Silas Croft.

Who had murdered Frank Muller was and remains a mystery among them
to this day. The knife was identified by natives about the farm as
belonging to the Hottentot Jantje, and a Hottentot had been seen running
away from the place of the deed and hunted for some way, but he could
not be caught or heard of again. Therefore many of them are of the
opinion that he is the guilty man. Others, again, believe that the crime
rests upon the shoulders of the villainous one-eyed Kafir, Hendrik,
Muller's own servant, who had also vanished. But as they have never
found either of them, and are not likely to do so, the point remains a
moot one. Nor, indeed, did they take any great pains to hunt for them.
Frank Muller was not a popular character, and the fact of a man coming
to a mysterious end does not produce any great sensation among a rough
people and in rough times.

On the following day, old Silas Croft, Bessie, and John Niel also buried
their dead in the little graveyard on the hill-side, and there Jess
lies, with some ten feet of earth only between her and the man upon whom
she was the instrument of vengeance. But they never knew this, or even
guessed it. They never knew indeed that she had been near Mooifontein on
that awful night. Nobody knew it except Jantje; and Jantje, haunted by
the footfall of the pursuing Boers, was gone from the ken of the white
man far into the heart of Central Africa.

"John," said the old man when they had filled in the grave, "this is no
country for Englishmen. Let us go home to England." John bowed his head
in assent, for he could not speak. Fortunately means were not wanting,
although practically they were both ruined. The thousand pounds that
John had paid to Silas as the price of a third interest in