emed to jumble themselves up in my mind and shape a sentence that it
did not conceive. It was: "In the victory that is death," which, when
I came to think of it, of course, meant nothing. How victory could be
death I did not understand--at any rate, at that time, I who was but a
lad of small experience.

As we trekked along comfortably enough, for the road was good and the
cart, being on springs, gave my leg no pain, I asked my father what he
thought that the Heer Marais had meant when he told us that the Boers
had business at Maraisfontein, during which our presence as Englishmen
would not be agreeable to them.

"Meant, Allan? He meant that these traitorous Dutchmen are plotting
against their sovereign, and are afraid lest we should report their
treason. Either they intend to rebel because of that most righteous
act, the freeing of the slaves, and because we will not kill out all the
Kaffirs with whom they chance to quarrel, or to trek from the Colony.
For my part I think it will be the latter, for, as you have heard, some
parties have already gone; and, unless I am mistaken, many more mean
to follow, Marais and Retief and that plotter, Pereira, among them.
Let them go; I say, the sooner the better, for I have no doubt that the
English flag will follow them in due course."

"I hope that they won't," I answered with a nervous laugh; "at any rate,
until I have won back my mare." (I had left her in Retief's care as
stakeholder, until the match should be shot off.)

For the rest of that two and a half hours' trek my father, looking very
dignified and patriotic, declaimed to me loudly about the bad behaviour
of the Boers, who hated and traduced missionaries, loathed and
abominated British rule and permanent officials, loved slavery and
killed Kaffirs whenever they got the chance. I listened to him politely,
for it was not wise to cross my parent when he was in that humour. Also,
having mixed a great deal with the Dutch, I knew that there was another
side to the question, namely, that the missionaries sometimes traduced
them (as, in fact, they did), and that British rule, or rather,
party government, played strange tricks with the interests of distant
dependencies. That permanent officials and im-permanent ones too--such
as governors full of a little brief authority--often misrepresented and
oppressed them. That Kaffirs, encouraged by the variegated policy of
these party governments and their servants, frequently stole th