wrung our hearts to see. For hours,
sometimes for days indeed, he would sit about the place brooding and
saying no word. At other times he would mount his horse and ride away
none knew whither, perhaps not to return that night or the next, or the
next, till we were terrified by the thought that he too might never
come back again. It was useless to be angry with him, for he would only
answer with a little smile:

"You forget; I must be seeking my wife, who is waiting for me upon the
Mountain of the Hand," and then we learned that he had ridden to a far
off hill to examine it, or to see some travellers or natives and ask of
them if they knew or had heard of such a mountain, with ridges upon its
eastern slopes fashioned like the thumb and fingers of a man's hand.
Indeed, in all that countryside, among both Boers and natives, Ralph
won the by-name of the "Man of the Mountain" because he rarely spoke
of aught else. But still folk, black and white, knew the reason of his
madness and bore with him, pitying his grief.

It was, I remember, in the season after Suzanne had vanished that the
Kaffirs became so angry and dangerous. For my part I believe that those
in our neighbourhood were stirred up by the emissaries of Swart Piet,
for though he had gone none knew where, his tools and agents remained
behind him. However this may have been, all over the country the black
men began to raid the stock, and in our case they ended by attacking the
stead also, a great number of them armed with guns. Fortunately we had a
little warning, and they were very sad Kaffirs that went away next day;
moreover, forty of them never went away at all. Just at dawn, when they
had been besieging the house for some hours, shouting, banging off their
guns, and trying to fire the roof by means of assegais with tufts of
blazing grass tied on to them, Jan, Ralph, and about twenty of our
people crept down under cover of the orchard wall and sallied out upon
them.

Almighty! how those men fought, especially Jan and Ralph. It was a
pleasure to see them, for I watched the whole thing from the _stoep_,
though I admit that I was anxious, since it was evident that neither of
them seemed to care whether he lived or died. However, as it turned out,
it was not they who died, but the Kaffirs, who went off with some few
cattle and afterwards left us in peace.

And now comes the strange part of the affair, though I scarcely like to
tell it, lest after all these years