d
mercy and peace have kissed each other over the bloody graves of the
victims.

Therefore even in my youth and inexperience I concluded that some
ineffable purpose was at work through this horror, and that the lives
of those poor men which had been thus sacrificed were necessary to that
purpose. This may appear a dreadful and fatalistic doctrine, but it
is one that is corroborated in Nature every day, and doubtless the
sufferers meet with their compensations in some other state. Indeed, if
it be not so, faith and all the religions are vain.

Or, of course, it may chance that such monstrous calamities happen, not
through the will of the merciful Power of which I have spoken, but in
its despite. Perhaps the devil of Scripture, at whom we are inclined to
smile, is still very real and active in this world of ours. Perhaps from
time to time some evil principle breaks into eruption, like the prisoned
forces of a volcano, bearing death and misery on its wings, until in the
end it must depart strengthless and overcome. Who can say?

The question is one that should be referred to the Archbishop of
Canterbury and the Pope of Rome in conclave, with the Lama of Thibet for
umpire in case they disagreed. I only try to put down the thoughts that
struck me so long ago as my mind renders them to-day. But very likely
they are not quite the same thoughts, for a full generation has gone by
me since then, and in that time the intelligence ripens as wine does in
a bottle.

Besides these general matters, I had questions of my own to consider
during those days of imprisonment--for instance, that of my own safety,
though of this, to be honest, I thought little. If I were going to be
killed, I was going to be killed, and there was an end. But my knowledge
of Dingaan told me that he had not massacred Retief and his companions
for nothing. This would be but the prelude to a larger slaughter, for I
had not forgotten what he said as to the sparing of Marie and the other
hints he gave me.

From all this I concluded, quite rightly as it proved, that some general
onslaught was being made upon the Boers, who probably would be swept out
to the last man. And to think that here I was, a prisoner in a Kaffir
kraal, with only a young woman as a jailer, and yet utterly unable to
escape to warn them. For round my hut lay a courtyard, and round it
again ran a reed fence about five feet six inches high. Whenever I
looked over this fence, by night or by da