the
Book, but just to make him quite mad, for the Book says nothing about
that. If so, I have a very good medicine, one that you white people do
not know, which improves the taste of the coffee, and it might save much
trouble. You see, if he came dancing about the place without any clothes
on, like a common Kaffir, the Heer Marais, although _he_ is really mad
also, might not wish for him as a son-in-law."

"Oh! go to the devil if you are not there already," I replied, and
turned over as though to sleep.

There was no need for me to have instructed that faithful creature, the
astute but immoral Hans, to call me early, as the lady did her mother in
the poem, for I do not think that I closed an eye that night. I spare
my reflections, for they can easily be imagined in the case of an
earnest-natured lad who was about to be bereft of his first love.

Long before the dawn I stood in the peach orchard, that orchard where
we had first met, and waited. At length Marie came stealing between
the tree trunks like a grey ghost, for she was wrapped in some
light-coloured garment. Oh! once more we were alone together. Alone in
the utter solitude and silence which precede the African dawn, when all
creatures that love the night have withdrawn to their lairs and hiding
places, and those that love the day still sleep their soundest.

She saw me and stood still, then opened her arms and clasped me to her
breast, uttering no word. A while later she spoke almost in a whisper,
saying:

"Allan, I must not stay long, for I think that if my father found us
together, he would shoot you in his madness."

Now as always it was of me she thought, not of herself.

"And you, my sweet?" I asked.

"Oh!" she answered, "that matters nothing. Except for the sin of it I
wish he would shoot me, for then I should have done with all this pain.
I told you, Allan, when the Kaffirs were on us yonder, that it might be
better to die; and see, my heart spoke truly."

"Is there no hope?" I gasped. "Will he really separate us and take you
away into the wilderness?"

"Certainly, nothing can turn him. Yet, Allan, there is this hope. In two
years, if I live, I shall be of full age, and can marry whom I will; and
this I swear, that I will marry none but you, no, not even if you were
to die to-morrow."

"I bless you for those words," I said.

"Why?" she asked simply. "What others could I speak? Would you have me
do outrage to my own heart and go through li