Then he grew silent from exhaustion.  Nor were we sorry, who at that moment did not wish to listen to the poor fellow’s talk.

Something over two hours had gone by since the moon broke out from the clouds.  I had greeted the Vrouw Prinsloo and all my other friends, and been received by them with rapture as one risen from the dead.  If they had loved me before, now a new gratitude was added to their love, since had it not been for my warning they also must have made acquaintance with the Zulu spears and perished.  It was on their part of the camp that the worst of the attack fell.  Indeed, from those wagons hardly anyone escaped.

I had told them all the story, to which they listened in dead silence.  Only when it was finished the Heer Meyer, whose natural gloom had been deepened by all these events, said: 

“Allemachte! but you have luck, Allan, to be left when everyone else is taken.  Now, did I not know you so well, like Hernan Pereira I should think that you and that devil Dingaan had winked at each other.”

The Vrouw Prinsloo turned on him furiously.

“How dare you say such words, Carl Meyer?” she exclaimed.  “Must Allan always be insulted just because he is English, which he cannot help?  For my part, I think that if anyone winked at Dingaan it was the stinkcat Pereira.  Otherwise why did he come away before the killing and bring that madman, Henri Marais, with him?”

“I don’t know, I am sure, aunt,” said Meyer humbly, for like everyone else he was afraid of the Vrouw Prinsloo.

“Then why can’t you hold your tongue instead of saying silly things which must give pain?” asked the vrouw.  “No, don’t answer, for you will only make matters worse; but take the rest of that meat to the poor Hottentot, Hans”—­I should explain that we had been supping—­“who, although he has eaten enough to burst any white stomach, I dare say can manage another pound or two.”

Meyer obeyed meekly, and the others melted away also as they were wont to do when the vrouw showed signs of war, so that she and we two were left alone.

“Now,” said the vrouw, “everyone is tired, and I say that it is time to go to rest.  Good night, nephew Allan and niece Marie,” and she waddled away leaving us together.

“Husband,” said Marie presently, “will you come and 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.