e so very long I shall be of age, if I live. Still
I dare say you no longer think of marriage with me, who, perhaps, are
already married to someone else, especially as now I and all of us are
no better than wandering beggars. Yet I have thought it right to tell
you these things, which you may like to know.

"Oh, why did God ever put it into my father's heart to leave the Cape
Colony just because he hated the British Government and Hernan Pereira
and others persuaded him? I know not, but, poor man, he is sorry enough
now. It is pitiful to see him; at times I think that he is going mad.

"The paper is done, and the messenger is going; also the sick child
is dying and I must attend to her. Will this letter ever come to your
hands, I wonder? I am sending with it the little money I have to pay for
its delivery--about four pounds English. If not, there is an end. If it
does, and you cannot come or send others, at least pray for us. I dream
of you by night and think of you by day, for how much I love you I
cannot tell.

"In life or death I am

"Your MARIE."

Such was this awful letter. I still have it; it lies before me, those
ragged sheets of paper covered with faint pencil-writing that is blotted
here and there with tear marks, some of them the tears of Marie who
wrote, some of them the tears of me who read. I wonder if there exists a
more piteous memorial of the terrible sufferings of the trek-Boers, and
especially of such of them as forced their way into the poisonous
veld around Delagoa, as did this Marais expedition and those under
the command of Triechard. Better, like many of their people, to have
perished at once by the spears of Umzilikazi and other savages than to
endure these lingering tortures of fever and starvation.

As I finished reading this letter my father, who had been out visiting
some of his Mission Kaffirs, entered the house, and I went into the
sitting-room to meet him.

"Why, Allan, what is the matter with you?" he asked, noting my
tear-stained face.

I gave him the letter, for I could not speak, and with difficulty he
deciphered it.

"Merciful God, what dreadful news!" he said when he had finished. "Those
poor people! those poor, misguided people! What can be done for them?"

"I know one thing that can be done, father, or at any rate can be
attempted. I can try to reach them."

"Are you mad?" he asked. "How is it possible for you, one man, to get to
Delagoa Bay, buy cattle, and rescue