Well, all the rest may be imagined.  They were married a fortnight later in Durban and a very pleasant affair it was, since Sir Alexander, who by the way, treated me most handsomely from a business point of view, literally entertained the whole town on that festive occasion.  Immediately afterwards Stephen, accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Eversley and his father, took his wife home “to be educated,” though what that process consisted of I never heard.  Hans and I saw them off at the Point and our parting was rather sad, although Hans went back the richer by the £500 which Stephen had promised him.  He bought a farm with the money, and on the strength of his exploits, established himself as a kind of little chief.  Of whom more later—­as they say in the pedigree books.

Sammy, too, was set up as the proprietor of a small hotel, where he spent most of his time in the bar dilating to the customers in magnificent sentences that reminded me of the style of a poem called “The Essay on Man” (which I once tried to read and couldn’t), about his feats as a warrior among the wild Mazitu and the man-eating, devil-worshipping Pongo tribes.

Two years or less afterwards I received a letter, from which I must quote a passage: 

“As I told you, my father has given a living which he owns to Mr. Eversley, a pretty little place where there isn’t much for a parson to do.  I think it rather bores my respected parents-in-law.  At any rate, ‘Dogeetah’ spends a lot of his time wandering about the New Forest, which is near by, with a butterfly-net and trying to imagine that he is back in Africa.  The ‘Mother of the Flower’ (who, after a long course of boot-kissing mutes, doesn’t get on with English servants) has another amusement.  There is a small lake in the Rectory grounds in which is a little island.  Here she has put up a reed fence round a laurustinus bush which flowers at the same time of year as did the Holy Flower, and within this reed fence she sits whenever the weather will allow, as I believe going through ‘the rites of the Flower.’  At least when I called upon her there one day, in a boat, I found her wearing a white robe and singing some mystical native song.”

Many years have gone by since then.  Both Brother John and his wife have departed to their rest and their strange story, the strangest almost of all stories, is practically forgotten.  Stephen, whose father has also departed, is a prosperous baronet and rather heavy member of Parliament and magistrate, the father of many fine children, for the Miss Hope of old days has proved as fruitful as a daughter of the Goddess of Fertility, for that was the “Mother’s” real office, ought to be.

“Sometimes,” she said to me one day with a laugh, as she surveyed a large (and noisy) selection of her numerous offspring, “sometimes, O Allan”—­she still retains that trick of speech—­“I wish that I were back in the peace of the Home of the Flower.  Ah!” she added with something of a thrill in her voice, “never can I forget the blue of the sacred lake or the sight of those skies at dawn.  Do you think that I shall see them again when I die, O Allan?”