“Talking of blankets,” I said in order to change the subject, “from whom did you get these karosses?”

“From whom?  Why, from the Missie, of course, baas.  When I heard that you were to sleep in the cart I went to her and borrowed them to cover you.  Also, I had forgotten, she gave me a writing for you,” and he felt about, first in his dirty shirt, then under his arm, and finally in his fuzzy hair, from which last hiding place he produced a little bit of paper folded into a pellet.  I undid it and read these words, written with a pencil and in French:—­

“I shall be in the peach orchard half an hour before sunrise.  Be there if you would bid me farewell.—­M.”

“Is there any answer, baas?” asked Hans when I had thrust the note into my pocket.  “If so I can take it without being found out.”  Then an inspiration seemed to strike him, and he added:  “Why do you not take it yourself?  The Missie’s window is easy to open, also I am sure she would be pleased to see you.”

“Be silent,” I said.  “I am going to sleep.  Wake me an hour before the cock-crow—­and, stay—­see that the horses have got out of the kraal so that you cannot find them too easily in case the Reverend wishes to start very early.  But do not let them wander far, for here we are no welcome guests.”

“Yes, baas.  By the way, baas, the Heer Pereira, who tried to cheat you over those geese, is sleeping in an empty house not more than two miles away.  He drinks coffee when he wakes up in the morning, and his servant, who makes it, is my good friend.  Now would you like me to put a little something into it?  Not to kill him, for that is against the law in the Book, but just to make him quite mad, for the Book says nothing about that.  If so, I have a very good medicine, one that you white people do not know, which improves the taste of the coffee, and it might save much trouble.  You see, if he came dancing about the place without any clothes on, like a common Kaffir, the Heer Marais, although he is really mad also, might not wish for him as a son-in-law.”

“Oh! go to the devil if you are not there already,” I replied, and turned over as though to sleep.

There was no need for me to have instructed that faithful creature, the astute but immoral Hans, to call me early, as the lady did her mother in the poem, for I do not think that I closed an eye that night.  I spare my reflections, for they can easily be imagined in the case of an earnest-natured lad who was about to be bereft of his first love.

Long before the dawn I stood in the peach orchard, that orchard where we had first met, and waited.  At length Marie came stealing between the tree trunks like a grey ghost, for she was wrapped in some light-coloured garment.  Oh! once more we were alone together.  Alone in the utter solitude and silence which precede the African dawn, when all creatures that love the night have withdrawn to their lairs and hiding places, and those that love the day still sleep their soundest.