when the sun began to
slope, and when it neared the horizon and the sheep began to cast long
shadows across the karoo, he still sat there. He hoped when the first
rays touched the hills till the sun dipped behind them and was gone.
Then he called his ewes together, and broke down the altar, and threw
the meat far, far away into the field.

He walked home behind his flock. His heart was heavy. He reasoned so:
"God cannot lie. I had faith. No fire came. I am like Cain--I am not
His. He will not hear my prayer. God hates me."

The boy's heart was heavy. When he reached the kraal gate the two girls
met him.

"Come," said the yellow-haired Em, "let us play coop. There is still
time before it gets quite dark. You, Waldo, go and hide on the kopje;
Lyndall and I will shut eyes here, and we will not look."

The girls hid their faces in the stone wall of the sheep-kraal, and the
boy clambered half way up the kopje. He crouched down between two stones
and gave the call. Just then the milk-herd came walking out of the
cow-kraal with two pails. He was an ill-looking Kaffer.

"Ah!" thought the boy, "perhaps he will die tonight, and go to hell! I
must pray for him, I must pray!"

Then he thought--"Where am I going to?" and he prayed desperately.

"Ah! this is not right at all," little Em said, peeping between the
stones, and finding him in a very curious posture. "What are you doing
Waldo? It is not the play, you know. You should run out when we come to
the white stone. Ah, you do not play nicely."

"I--I will play nicely now," said the boy, coming out and standing
sheepishly before them; "I--I only forgot; I will play now."

"He has been to sleep," said freckled Em.

"No," said beautiful little Lyndall, looking curiously at him: "he has
been crying."

She never made a mistake.

*****

The Confession.

One night, two years after, the boy sat alone on the kopje. He had crept
softly from his father's room and come there. He often did, because,
when he prayed or cried aloud, his father might awake and hear him; and
none knew his great sorrow, and none knew his grief, but he himself, and
he buried them deep in his heart.

He turned up the brim of his great hat and looked at the moon, but
most at the leaves of the prickly pear that grew just before him. They
glinted, and glinted, and glinted, just like his own heart--cold, so
hard, and very wicked. His physical heart had pain also; it seemed full
of little bits of gla