I thought to myself,
and, like Pharaoh, I hardened my heart.

Now in those days my sight was very good, and while the men were yet
some way off I studied them all and made up my mind about them. First
there was a large young man of five-and-twenty or thereabouts, and I
noted with a sort of fear that he was not unlike to Ralph. The eyes were
the same and the shape of the forehead, only this gentleman had a weak,
uncertain mouth, and I judged that he was very good-humoured, but of an
indolent mind. By his side rode another man of quite a different stamp,
and middle-aged. "The lawyer," I said to myself as I looked at his
weasel-like face, bushy eyebrows, and red hair. Indeed, that was an
easy guess, for who can mistake a lawyer, whatever his race may be? That
trade is stronger than any blood, and leaves the same seal on all who
follow it. Doubtless if those lawyers of whom the Lord speaks hard
things in the Testament were set side by side with the lawyers who draw
mortgage bonds and practise usury here in South Africa, they would prove
to be as like to each other as are the grains of corn upon one mealie
cob. Yes, when, all dressed the same, they stand together among the
goats on the last day few indeed will know them apart.

"A fool and a knave," said I to myself. "Well, perhaps I can deal with
the knave and then the fool will not trouble me."

As for the third man, I took no pains to study him, for I saw at once
that he was nothing but an interpreter.

Well, up they rode to the _stoep_, the two Englishmen taking off their
hats to me, after their foolish fashion, while the interpreter, who
called me "Aunt," although I was younger than he was, asked for leave to
off-saddle, according to our custom. I nodded my head, and having given
the horses to the Cape boys, they came up onto the _stoep_ and shook
hands with me as I sat. I was not going to rise to greet two Englishmen
whom I already hated in my heart, first because they _were_ Englishmen,
and secondly because they were about to tempt me into sin, for such
sooner or later we always learn to hate.

"Sit," I said, pointing to the yellow-wood bench which was seated with
strips of _rimpi_, and the three of them squeezed themselves into the
bench and sat there like white-breasted crows on a bough; the young man
staring at me with a silly smile, the lawyer peering this way and
that, and turning up his sharp nose at the place and all in it, and the
interpreter doing nothi