at this season of
the year, I confess that these sights and sounds did not tend to raise
my spirits, which were already lower than they should have been on
that eventful day. Hans, however, who arrived to help me put on my best
clothes for the ceremony, was for once consoling.

"Don't look sick, baas," he said, "for if there is storm in the morning,
there is shine at night."

"Yes," I answered, speaking more to myself than to him, "but what will
happen between the storm of the morning and the peace of the night?"

It was arranged that the commission, which, counting the native
after-riders, consisted of over a hundred people, among them several
boys, who were little more than children, was to ride at one hour before
noon. Nobody could get about to make the necessary preparations until
the heavy rain had passed away, which it did a little after eight
o'clock. Therefore when I left the wagon to eat, or try to eat some
breakfast, I found the whole camp in a state of bustle.

Boers were shouting to their servants, horses were being examined, women
were packing the saddle-bags of their husbands and fathers with spare
clothes, the pack-beasts were being laden with biltong and other
provisions, and so forth.

In the midst of all this tumult I began to wonder whether my private
business would not be forgotten, since it seemed unlikely that time
could be found for marriages. However, about ten o'clock when, having
done everything that I had to do, I was sitting disconsolately upon my
wagon box, being too shy to mix with that crowd of busy mockers or to go
to the Prinsloos' camp to make inquiries, the vrouw herself appeared.

"Come on, Allan," she said, "the commandant is waiting and swearing
because you are not there. Also, there is another waiting, and oh! she
looks lovely. When they see her, every man in the camp will want her for
himself, whether he has got a wife or not, for in that matter, although
you mayn't think so just now, they are all the same as the Kaffirs. Oh!
I know them, I know them, a white skin makes no difference."

While she held forth thus in her usual outspoken fashion, the vrouw was
dragging me along by the hand, just as though I were a naughty little
boy. Nor could I get free from that mighty grip, or, when once her great
bulk was in motion, match my weight against it. Of course, some of the
younger Boers, who, knowing her errand, had followed her, set up a shout
of cheers and laughter, which attr