and thence, I suppose, straight out to the sea coast,
whence they returned at dawn.

On arriving at the mouth of Groote Kloof about four o'clock in the
afternoon, my father and I were astonished to see a great number of
Boers assembled there, and among them a certain sprinkling of their
younger womankind, who had come on horseback or in carts.

"Good gracious!" I said to my father; "if I had known there was to be
such a fuss as this about a shooting match, I don't think I could have
faced it."

"Hum," he answered; "I think there is more in the wind than your match.
Unless I am much mistaken, it has been made the excuse of a public
meeting in a secluded spot, so as to throw the Authorities off the
scent."

As a matter of fact, my father was quite right. Before we arrived there
that day the majority of those Boers, after full and long discussion,
had arranged to shake the dust of the Colony off their feet, and find a
home in new lands to the north.

Presently we were among them, and I noticed that, one and all, their
faces were anxious and preoccupied. Pieter Retief caught sight of me
being helped out of the cart by my father and Hans, whom I had brought
to load, and for a moment looked puzzled. Evidently his thoughts were
far away. Then he remembered and exclaimed in his jolly voice:

"Why! here is our little Englishman come to shoot off his match like a
man of his word. Friend Marais, stop talking about your losses"--this in
a warning voice--"and give him good day."

So Marais came, and with him Marie, who blushed and smiled, but to my
mind looked more of a grown woman than ever before; one who had left
girlhood behind her and found herself face to face with real life and
all its troubles. Following her close, very close, as I was quick to
notice, was Hernan Pereira. He was even more finely dressed than usual
and carried in his hand a beautiful new, single-barrelled rifle, also
fitted to take percussion caps, but, as I thought, of a very large bore
for the purpose of goose shooting.

"So you have got well again," he said in a genial voice that yet did not
ring true. Indeed, it suggested to me that he wished I had done nothing
of the sort. "Well, Mynheer Allan, here you find me quite ready to shoot
your head off." (He didn't mean that, though I dare say he was.) "I
tell you that the mare is as good as mine, for I have been practising,
haven't I, Marie? as the 'aasvogels'" (that is, vultures) "round the
stead kn