for we had best be off," and, stooping down he lifted
Suzanne in his arms and walked away with her as though she were a child.
For a while they followed the windings of the stream, keeping under
cover of the reeds and bushes that grew upon its banks. Then they struck
out to the right, taking advantage of a cloud which dimmed the face of
the moon for a time, for they wished to reach the kloof without being
seen from the waggon. Nor, indeed, were they seen, for the driver and
voorlooper were seated by the cooking-fire on its further side, smoking,
and dozing as they smoked. Only the great thoroughbred horse winded
them and snorted, pulling at the riem with which he was tied to the hind
wheel of the waggon.

"Something has frightened the _schimmel_," said the driver waking up.

"It is nothing," answered the other boy drowsily; "he is not used to
the veldt, he who always sleeps in a house like a man; or, perhaps, he
smells a hyena in the kloof."

"I thought I heard a sound like that of a gun a while ago down yonder by
the sea," said the driver again. "Say, brother, shall we go and find out
what made it?"

"By no means," answered the voorlooper, who did not like walking about
at night, fearing lest he should meet spooks. "I have been wide awake
and listening all this time, and I heard no gun; nor, indeed, do people
go out shooting at night. Also it is our business to watch here by the
waggon till our master and mistress return."

"Where can they have gone?" said the driver, who felt frightened, he
knew not why. "It is strange that they should be so long away when it is
time for them to sleep."

"Who can account for the ways of white people?" answered the other,
shrugging his shoulders. "Very often they sit up all night. Doubtless
these two will return when they are tired, or perhaps they desire to
sleep in the veldt. At any rate it is not our duty to interfere with
them, seeing that they can come to no harm here where there are neither
men nor tigers."

"So be it," said the driver, and they both dozed off again till the
messenger of ill came to rouse them.

Now Black Piet and his men crept up the kloof carrying Suzanne with
them, till they came to a little patch of rocky ground at the head of it
where they had left their horses.

"That was very well managed," said Piet as they loosed them and
tightened their girths, "and none can ever know that we have made this
journey. To-morrow the bride and bridegroom wil