“We are every one of us in the hand of God,” she replied in her sweet voice.  “Allan, you hear, my father has promised?”

“Yes, Marie, he has promised—­after a fashion,” I replied gloomily, for somehow his words struck a chill through me.

“I have promised, Allan, and I will keep my promise to you, as I have kept my oath to God, attempting to work you no harm, and leaving all in His hands.  But you, on your part, must promise also that, till she is of age, you will not take Marie as a wife—­no, not if you were left alone together in the veld.  You must be as people who are affianced to each other, no more.”

So, having no choice, I promised, though with a heavy heart.  Then, I suppose in order to make this solemn contract public, Marais called the surviving Boers, who were loitering near, and repeated to them the terms of the contract that we had made.

The men laughed and shrugged their shoulders.  But Vrouw Prinsloo, I remember, said outright that she thought the business foolish, since if anyone had a right to Marie, I had, wherever I chose to take her.  She added that, as for Hernan Pereira, he was a “sneak and a stinkcat,” who had gone off to save his own life, and left them all to die.  If she were Marie, should they meet again, she would greet him with a pailful of dirty water in the face, as she herself meant to do if she got the chance.

Vrouw Prinsloo, it will be observed, was a very outspoken woman and, I may add, an honest one.

So this contract was settled.  I have set it out at length because of its importance in our story.  But now I wish—­ah! how I wish that I had insisted upon being married to Marie then and there.  If I had done so, I think I should have carried my point, for I was the “master of many legions” in the shape of cattle, food and ammunition, and rather than risk a quarrel with me, the other Boers would have forced Marais to give way.  But we were young and inexperienced; also it was fated otherwise.  Who can question the decrees of Fate written immutably, perhaps long before we were born, in the everlasting book of human destinies?

Yet, when I had shaken off my first fears and doubts, my lot and Marie’s were very happy, a perfect paradise, indeed, compared with what we had gone through during that bitter time of silence and separation.  At any rate, we were acknowledged to be affianced by the little society in which we lived, including her father, and allowed to be as much alone together as we liked.  This meant that we met at dawn only to separate at nightfall, for, having little or no artificial light, we went to rest with the sun, or shortly after it.  Sweet, indeed, was that companionship of perfect trust and love; so sweet, that even after all these years I do not care to dwell upon the holy memory of those blessed months.