r you and yours, for I have heard every bit of that story, though not
from him. Now hearken. You have appealed to the law, and, as commandant,
I must allow your appeal. But after twelve o'clock to-morrow night,
according to your own showing, the law ceases to bind your daughter.
Therefore, on Monday morning, if there is no clergyman in the camp and
these two wish it, I, as commandant, will marry them before all men, as
I have the power to do."

Then Marais broke into one of those raving fits of temper which were
constitutional in him, and to my mind showed that he was never quite
sane. Oddly enough, it was on poor Marie that he concentrated his wrath.
He cursed her horribly because she had withstood his will and refused
to marry Hernan Pereira. He prayed that evil might fall on her; that she
might never bear a child, and that if she did, it might die, and other
things too unpleasant to mention.

We stared at him astonished, though I think that had he been any other
man than the father of my betrothed, I should have struck him. Retief,
I noticed, lifted his hand to do so, then let it fall again, muttering:
"Let be; he is possessed with a devil."

At last Marais ceased, not, I think, from lack of words, but because
he was exhausted, and stood before us, his tall form quivering, and his
thin, nervous face working like that of a person in convulsions. Then
Marie, who had dropped her head beneath this storm, lifted it, and I saw
that her deep eyes were all ablaze and that she was very white.

"You are my father," she said in a low voice, "and therefore I must
submit to whatever you choose to say to me. Moreover, I think it likely
that the evil which you call down will fall upon me, since Satan is
always at hand to fulfil his own wishes. But if so, my father, I am
sure that this evil will recoil upon your own head, not only here, but
hereafter. There justice will be done to both of us, perhaps before very
long, and also to your nephew, Hernan Pereira."

Marais made no answer; his rage seemed to have spent itself. He only sat
himself again upon the disselboom of the wagon and went on cutting up
the tobacco viciously, as though he were slicing the heart of a foe.
Even the Vrouw Prinsloo was silent and stared at him whilst she fanned
herself with the vatdoek. But Retief spoke.

"I wonder if you are mad, or only wicked, Henri Marais," he said. "To
curse your own sweet girl like this you must be one or the other--a
single ch