egais, and penetrating by night, almost
alone, into the stronghold of a chieftain, and shooting him.

At length that war was patched up with an inconclusive peace and my
corps was disbanded. I returned home, no longer a lad, but a man with
experience of various kinds and a rather unique knowledge of Kaffirs,
their languages, history, and modes of thought and action. Also I had
associated a good deal with British officers, and from them acquired
much that I had found no opportunity of studying before, especially, I
hope, the ideas and standards of English gentlemen.

I had not been back at the Mission Station more than three weeks, quite
long enough for me to begin to be bored with idleness and inactivity,
when that call for which I had been waiting came at last.

One day a "smous", that is a low kind of white man, often a Jew, who
travels about trading with unsophisticated Boers and Kaffirs, and
cheating them if he can, called at the station with his cartful of
goods. I was about to send him away, having no liking for such gentry,
when he asked me if I were named Allan Quatermain. I said "Yes," whereon
he replied that he had a letter for me, and produced a packet wrapped up
in sail-cloth. I asked him whence he had it, and he answered from a man
whom he had met at Port Elizabeth, an east coast trader, who, hearing
that he was coming into the Cradock district, entrusted him with the
letter. The man told him that it was very important, and that I should
reward the bearer well if it were delivered safely.

While the Jew talked (I think he was a Jew) I was opening the
sail-cloth. Within was a piece of linen which had been oiled to keep out
water, addressed in some red pigment to myself or my father. This, too,
I opened, not without difficulty, for it was carefully sewn up, and
found within it a letter-packet, also addressed to myself or my father,
in the handwriting of Marie.

Great Heaven! How my heart jumped at that sight! Calling to Hans to make
the smous comfortable and give him food, I went into my own room, and
there read the letter, which ran thus:

"MY DEAR ALLAN,--I do not know whether the other letters I have written
to you have ever come to your hands, or indeed if this one will. Still,
I send it on chance by a wandering Portuguese half-breed who is going
to Delagoa Bay, about fifty miles, I believe, from the place where I now
write, near the Crocodile River. My father has named it Maraisfontein,
after our