nd see the home that
I made ready for you before I thought that you were dead? It is a poor
place, but I pray God that we may be happy there," and she took me by
the hand and kissed me once and twice and thrice.

About noon on the following day, when my wife and I were laughing and
arguing over some little domestic detail of our meagre establishment--so
soon are great griefs forgotten in an overwhelming joy, of a sudden I
saw her face change, and asked what was the matter.

"Hist!" she said, "I hear horses," and she pointed in a certain
direction.

I looked, and there, round the corner of the hill, came a body of Boers
with their after-riders, thirty-two or three of them in all, of whom
twenty were white men.

"See," said Marie, "my father is among them, and my cousin Hernan rides
at his side."

It was true. There was Henri Marais, and just behind him, talking into
his ear, rode Hernan Pereira. I remember that the two of them reminded
me of a tale I had read about a man who was cursed with an evil genius
that drew him to some dreadful doom in spite of the promptings of his
better nature. The thin, worn, wild-eyed Marais, and the rich-faced,
carnal Pereira whispering slyly into his ear; they were exact types of
that man in the story and his evil genius who dragged him down to hell.
Prompted by some impulse, I threw my arms round Marie and embraced her,
saying:

"At least we have been very happy for a while."

"What do you mean, Allan?" she asked doubtfully.

"Only that I think our good hours are done with for the present."

"Perhaps," she answered slowly; "but at least they have been very good
hours, and if I should die to-day I am glad to have lived to win them."

Then the cavalcade of Boers came up.

Hernan Pereira, his senses sharpened perhaps by the instincts of hate
and jealousy, was the first to recognise me.

"Why, Mynheer Allan Quatermain," he said, "how is it that you are here?
How is it that you still live? Commandant," he added, turning to a dark,
sad-faced man of about sixty whom at that time I did not know, "here
is a strange thing. This Heer Quatermain, an Englishman, was with the
Governor Retief at the town of the Zulu king, as the Heer Henri Marais
can testify. Now, as we know for sure Pieter Retief and all his people
are dead, murdered by Dingaan, how then does it happen that this man has
escaped?"

"Why do you put riddles to me, Mynheer Pereira?" asked the dark Boer.
"Doubtless the En