Yet of their old life, before the deluge of grief, too much was happy to be all swamped.  Time softened the ruggedness of their wound somewhat, and a day came when all the world was no longer black.  Little Paul helped them much, for what had once been Frikkie’s was now his; and as he grew before their eyes, his young strength and beauty were a balm to them.  David was much abroad in the lands now, for he was growing mealies and rapidly becoming a rich man; and as he rode oft in the morning and rode in at sundown, his new gravity of mind and mien broke up to the youngster who jumped at the stirrup with shouts and laughter, and demanded to ride on the saddle-bow.  At intervals, also, Paul laid claim to a gun, to spurs, to a watch, to all the things that go in procession across a child’s horizon, and Christina was not proof against the impulse to smile at him.

It is not to be thought, of course, that the shock of foreknowledge, of omnipotent vision, had left David scathless.  Though the other details of the tragedy shared his memory, and elbowed the terrifying sense of revelation, he would find himself now and again peering at the future, straining to foresee, as a sailor bores at a fog-bank.  Then he would catch himself, and start back shuddering to the instant matters about him.  Eventualities he could meet, but in their season and hand to hand; afar off they mastered him.  Christina, too, dwelt on it at seasons; but, by some process of her woman’s mind, it was less dreadful to her than to David:  she, too, could dream at times.

One day she was at work within the house, and Paul ran in and out.  She spoke to him once about introducing an evil-smelling water-tortoise; he went forth to exploit it in the yard.  From time to time his shrill voice reached her; then the frayed edges of David’s black trousers of ceremony engaged her, to the exclusion of all else.  Between the scissors and the needle, at last, there stole on her ear a faint tap, tap—­such a sound as water dropping on to a board makes.  It left her unconscious for a while, and then grew a little louder, with a note of vehemence.  At last she looked up and listened.  Tap, tap, it went, and she sprang from her chair and went to the stoep and looked out along the road.  Far off on the hillside was a horse, ridden furiously on the downward road, and though dwarfed by the miles, she could see the rider flogging and his urgent crouch over the horse’s withers.  It was a picture of mad speed, of terror and violence, and struck her with a chill.  Were the Kafirs risen? she queried.  Was there war abroad?  Was this mad rider her husband?

The last question struck her sharply, and she glanced about.  Little Paul was sitting on a stone, plaguing the water-tortoise with a stick, and speaking to himself and it.  The sight reassured her, and she viewed the rider again with equanimity.  But now she was able to place him:  it was David, and the horse was his big roan.  The pace at which he rode was winding up the distance, and the hoofs no longer tap-tapped, but rang insistently.  There was war, then; it could be nothing else.  Her category of calamities was brief, and war and the death of her dear ones nearly exhausted it.