I were deaf.

"_Vrouw, let ons trek_," and, to give weight to his words, he brought
his great fist down with a bang upon the table, knocking off a plate and
breaking it.

I stooped to pick up the pieces, rating him for his carelessness as I
gathered them, for I wished to have time to think, although for a long
while I had expected this. When I had found them all I placed them upon
the table, saying:

"They cannot be mended, and--hearts or plates--what cannot be mended had
best be hidden away. Hearts and plates are brittle things, but the last
can be bought in iron, as I wish the first could be also. Yes, husband,
we will trek if you desire it."

"What say you, son?" asked Jan.

Ralph answered his question by another. "In which direction will the
emigrants trek?"

"North, I believe, to the Vaal River."

"Then, father, I say let us go," he replied with more spirit than he had
shown for a long while, "for I have searched and inquired to the south
and the east and the west, and in them I can hear of no mountain that
has ridges upon its eastern slopes shaped like the thumb and fingers of
a man's hand with a stream of water issuing from between the thumb and
first finger."

Now once more we were silent, for we saw that his madness had again
taken hold of Ralph's mind, and that was a sad silence.

CHAPTER XXV

THE GREAT TREK

On the morrow we began to make ready, and a month later we trekked from
our much loved home. Jan tried to sell the farm, which was a very good
one of over six thousand morgen, or twelve thousand English acres, well
watered, and having on it a dwelling house built of stone, with large
kraals and out-buildings, an orchard of fruit-trees, and twenty morgen
of crop lands that could be irrigated in the dry season, well fenced in
with walls built of loose stones. But no one would make a bid for it,
for there were few English about, and most of the farmers were trekking,
so at last he parted with it to a cowardly fellow, a Boer by birth, but,
as I believe, a spy of the British Government, who gave him fifty pounds
and an old waggon in exchange for the place and everything upon it
except the stock which we took with us.

Some years ago I heard that this man's grandson sold that same farm for
twenty thousand pounds in cash, and that now it is a place where they
breed horses, angora goats, and ostriches in great numbers. It makes me
mad to think that the descendant of that low spy should have p