“But, dear Allan, unless help comes to us I think that we shall die every one, for God alone knows the miseries that we suffer and the horrible sights of sickness and death that are around us.  At this moment there lies by me a little girl who is dying of fever.

“Oh, Allan, if you can help us, do so!  Because of our sick it is impossible for us to get to Delagoa Bay, and if we did we have no money to buy anything there, for all that we had with us was lost in a wagon in a flooded river.  It was a great sum, for it included Hernan’s rich fortune which he brought from the Cape with him in gold.  Nor can we move anywhere else, for we have no cattle or horses.  We have sent to Delagoa Bay, where we hear these are to be had, to try to buy them on credit; but my cousin Hernan’s relations, of whom he used to talk so much, are dead or gone away, and no one will trust us.  With the neighbouring Kaffirs, too, who have plenty of cattle, we have quarrelled since, unfortunately, my cousin and some of the other Boers tried to take certain beasts of theirs without payment.  So we are quite helpless, and can only wait for death.

“Allan, my father says that he asked your father to collect some monies that were owing to him.  If it were possible for you or other friends to come to Delagoa in a ship with that money, I think that it might serve to buy some oxen, enough for a few wagons.  Then perhaps we might trek back and fall in with a party of Boers who, we believe, have crossed the Quathlamba Mountains into Natal.  Or perhaps we might get to the Bay and find a ship to take us anywhere from this horrible place.  If you could come, the natives would guide you to where we are.

“But it is too much to hope that you will come, or that if you do come you will find us still alive.

“Allan, my dearest, I have one more thing to say, though I must say it shortly, for the paper is nearly finished.  I do not know, supposing that you are alive and well, whether you still care for me, who left you so long ago—­it seems years and years—­but my heart is where it was, and where I promised it should remain, in your keeping.  Of course, Hernan has pressed me to marry him, and my father has wished it.  But I have always said no, and now, in our wretchedness, there is no more talk of marriage at present, which is the one good thing that has happened to me.  And, Allan, before so very long I shall be of age, if I live.  Still I dare say you no longer think of marriage with me, who, perhaps, are already married to someone else, especially as now I and all of us are no better than wandering beggars.  Yet I have thought it right to tell you these things, which you may like to know.

“Oh, why did God ever put it into my father’s heart to leave the Cape Colony just because he hated the British Government and Hernan Pereira and others persuaded him?  I know not, but, poor man, he is sorry enough now.  It is pitiful to see him; at times I think that he is going mad.