of Marie, who now only entered the place in the company of her father.
Once I managed to ask her why she did not come oftener and alone. Her
face grew troubled as she whispered back, "Because it is not allowed,
Allan," and then without another word left the place.

Why, I wondered to myself, was it not allowed, and an answer sprang
up in my mind. Doubtless it was because of that tall young man who had
argued with my father in the wagon-house. Marie had never spoken to me
of him, but from the Hottentot Hans and my father I managed to collect a
good deal of information concerning him and his business.

It appeared that he was the only child of Henri Marais's sister, who
married a Portuguese from Delagoa Bay of the name of Pereira, who had
come to the Cape Colony to trade many years before and settled there.
Both he and his wife were dead, and their son, Hernando, Marie's cousin,
had inherited all their very considerable wealth.

Indeed, now I remembered having heard this Hernando, or Hernan, as the
Boers called him for short, spoken of in past years by the Heer Marais
as the heir to great riches, since his father had made a large fortune
by trading in wine and spirits under some Government monopoly which he
held. Often he had been invited to visit Maraisfontein, but his parents,
who doted on him and lived in one of the settled districts not far from
Cape Town, would never allow him to travel so far from them into these
wild regions.

Since their death, however, things had changed. It appeared that on the
decease of old Pereira the Governor of the Colony had withdrawn the wine
and spirit monopoly, which he said was a job and a scandal, an act that
made Hernando Pereira very angry, although he needed no more money, and
had caused him to throw himself heart and soul into the schemes of the
disaffected Boers. Indeed, he was now engaged as one of the organisers
of the Great Trek which was in contemplation. In fact, it had already
begun, into the partially explored land beyond the borders of the
Colony, where the Dutch farmers proposed to set up dominions of their
own.

That was the story of Hernando Pereira, who was to be--nay, who had
already become--my rival for the hand of the sweet and beautiful Marie
Marais.

One night when my father and I were alone in the little room where
he slept with me, and he had finished reading his evening portion of
Scripture aloud, I plucked up my courage to tell him that I loved Marie