Chapter II: Part I (2)

Everyone in the world seemed to be sleeping except the dead people and Poppy. Even the clock in the Government buildings struck as though muffled up in blankets, speaking in its sleep. When it was striking she raised her head to listen and count the strokes, and forgetting the horror of the night opened her eyes--and beheld a terrible, shroudy vision creeping over the world. It came very slowly and stealthily, like a grey witch in a tale of horror, and ate up little patches of darkness as it came, swelling larger as it ate. Oh! the dead people swaying to and fro on the water! She prayed they might be gone back to their graves before the grey witch reached them with her long, clutching fingers; she prayed in a frenzy of fear for herself, calling to Christ and Mary Mother of God, to save her from the grey witch. She rocked herself backwards and forwards, praying and moaning, and almost falling from the tree, and at last in reckless desperation opened her eyes, and glared out over the dam--and saw that the dawn had come. The grey witch had turned into a lovely lady, all decked in palest pink, with her arms spread wide in the sky, trailing long veils of sheeny lavender cloud behind her.

* * * * *

A man and a boy with guns in their hands were creeping along under the dam wall, trying to get near a covey of wild duck on the water. Presently they stopped, and crouching, took aim and fired. The birds rose in a swarm and flew shrieking in long black lines, leaving two poor little black bodies on the dam--one flapping the water with a feeble wing, trying to rise, and falling back every time. The boy threw off his clothes and went in after them, while the man drew under the shadow of the dam wall, and began to run, making for the far side of the water, where the ducks seemed likely to settle again.

Presently the lady of the sky grew brighter and streaks of gold came into her pink and lavender veils; the grass was all silvery with the heavy dew, and the earth gave up a sweet and lovely smell. God seems to go away from Africa at night, but He comes back most beautiful and radiant in the morning. Birds began to chirrup and twitter in the trees and bushes, and take little flying journeys in the air. The clock struck five--clear and bell-like strokes now, that sang and echoed out into the morning.

Poppy felt cold and stiff and hungry, and very tired, as though she should fall down and die if she stayed in the tree any longer.

There was nothing to do, and nowhere to go but home. After all, Aunt Lena could only kill her once. Then she would join Ina and see her mother, and hear Irish melodies, and be where it was not cold or lonely any more. She got down from the tree almost cheerfully and made her way through the grass, plucking a few _crase bessies_ by the way and munching them as she walked. There was hardly anyone about the town, except a few _boys_ carrying pails of water from the fountain. When she reached home, she found that the house was still shut and locked, with all the blinds down. So she sat on the kitchen step and waited until old Sara, coming out to get wood for the fire, nearly fell over her.

"Tch! Tch! Tch!" she clucked. "_Arme kentze! War vas sig gisterand?_" (Poor child! Where were you last night?)

"_Dar bij de dam. Ge koffi O'Sara. Ik is freeslik kow._" (Up by the Big Dam. Give me some coffee, Sara. I am very cold.)

"Jah! Jah!" said old Sara, and hurried away, clucking and muttering, to make the fire and get the morning coffee. Poppy went in and warmed herself, and presently got down the cups and beakers and stood them in a row on the kitchen table. Cups and saucers for aunt and uncle and Clara and Emily, and beakers for the children. Old Sara poured them full of steaming black coffee, added milk and sugar and a home-made rusk in each saucer, and carried them away to the bedrooms. Poppy sat down with a beaker full, dipping a rusk into the coffee and eating it sopped, because the rusks are too hard to eat any other way. Presently old Sara came and squatted on her haunches by the fire too, drinking her coffee from a white basin with a blue band round it (blue that it gave Poppy a pain to look at, it was so cold and livid), and making fearful squelching noises, she sopped and ate. Rolling her big black and white eyes at Poppy, she whispered all that had happened after she had gone. Aunt Lena had screamed and cried for hours, raving that she would not have her child's murderess in the house again. She could go and live in the fowls' _hok_, or the forage-house, until another home was found for her, but if Poppy came into her sight again, she would tear her limb from limb. Afterwards she had coughed and spat up blood. Old Sara wagged her head, giving this piece of information as one who should say: "Serve her right, too." The doctor had come and said that "something was broken inside." Old Sara patted her wobbly stomach. "She must go to bed and not move for a month or she would go too." Old Sara pointed sanctimoniously upwards.

It was even so. Aunt Lena lay for weeks on her bed, but still ruling her house from it. Poppy was not allowed to eat or sleep under the house roof. A blanket was given to her, and she slept on the bales of chaff in the out-house with a bundle of forage for a pillow. Old Sara brought to her there such meals as she was allowed to receive.

The twins were not allowed to speak to her: a strange girl was hired to take them out--Poppy did not mind that. Clara and Emily passed her in the yard as though she was a jackal or some unclean beast--she minded that even less. The only thing she minded at all, was not being allowed to see Ina before she was buried.

On the day of the funeral, the little cold form in the coffin was not more cold and numb than one lying out in the out-house between two bales of chaff. Despair of mourning had Poppy by the throat. She could have wailed like a banshee. Indeed, if her voice had not gone from her, it is probable that she would have relieved the pressure on her heart and brain in this fashion. As it was, she was the only person in the place who gave no outward sign of mourning. Her old blue galatea overall, with the pattern worn faint in front, and the sleeves in rags, might have grown to her back. But old Sara was given a dark dress of Aunt Lena's, and a new black _dook_ to wear on her head. Clara and Emily had new black alpaca dresses, with tucks round the bottom and black ribbon sashes. Eight little girls came dressed in white, with their hair down and long floating white muslin veils hanging behind, and bunches of white flowers in their hands. They were to carry the coffin in turns, four carrying and four walking behind, because it was a very long way to the graveyard. Mr. Kennedy and Georgie and Bobby walked behind them, and then a great many men. But the saddest mourner of all watched from the crack of the forage-house door, and thought how sad and beautiful it all was, and how it would have been spoilt if she had gone out and joined it in her blue overall; and after the procession was out of sight, lay there on her face on the chaff, and could not cry; and seemed to have swallowed a stone, that stuck in her throat and gave her dreadful pains all across her chest; and whose heart kept saying: "I hate God! I hate aunt!" And when she tried to scream it aloud, found that she had no voice.

In the evening when the sun was set, but before it was dark, a figure stole out of the back yard, crept through the empty _spruit_, slipped through a private garden and came out by the cathedral steps; then up past the big church bell that tolled for the dead, and so to the graveyard.

All the way she gathered wild flowers and grasses--rock-maiden-hair, _rooi gras_, moon-flowers, and most especially shivery-grass, and the little perky rushes with a flower sprouting out of them, which the children call _tulps_. Ina had always loved these. Some "four o'clocks" too, stolen from a front garden as she passed, were added, and even a _stink bloem_ graced the great bunch with which Poppy entered the churchyard.

She found a new little heap of red earth that she knew must be Ina's grave, for it was all covered with wreaths and the bunches of flowers the eight girls had carried. Scraping them all to the foot of the grave, Poppy laid hers where she thought Ina's hands would be, whispering down through the earth:

"From Poppy, Ina--Poppy who loves you best of all."

* * * * *

Some nights old Sara would come sneaking softly over to the forage-house, to sit a while with Poppy; sometimes she had a rusk to give the prisoner; most often she had nothing but an end of candle, but that was very welcome. Lighting it, and sticking it on a side beam, she would squat on the floor, and taking off her _dook_, proceed to comb her wool. Poppy was glad of company, and interested in the frank way old Sara attended to the business of catching and killing her _chochermanners_; besides, there were a lot of interesting things in old Sara's wool besides _chochermanners_: there was a little bone box full of snuff, and a little bone spoon to put it in the nose with; and a piece of paper with all old Sara's money in it; and a tooth belonging to old Sara's mother, and several small home-made bone combs and pins and charms.

Old Sara's Dutch was poor, and Poppy could not speak Basuto, so that much conversation did not ensue, but black people can tell a great deal without saying much.

Once Poppy asked her why she did not go to her _kraal_ and live with her children instead of working for white people.

Old Sara took snuff and answered briefly:

"_Ek het ne kinders, oor Ek is ne getroud._" (I have no children, because I am not married.)

This was good, but not infallible logic, as Poppy even in her few years had discovered.

"Why didn't you get married when you were young, old Sara?" she queried.

Old Sara rolled her eyes mournfully at the child, and muttered some words in her own language. Then slowly she undid the buttons of many kinds and colours which adorned the front of her dress. From the left bosom she took a large bundle of rags, and placed them carefully on the floor, then opening her bodice wide, she revealed her black body bare to the waist. Poppy's astonished gaze fell upon a right breast--no object of beauty, but large and heavy; but where the left breast should be was only a little shrivel of brown skin high up out of line with the other.

That was old Sara's only answer to Poppy's question. Afterwards she quietly replaced her bundle of rags, and rebuttoned her dress.

As for Poppy, she pondered the problem long. At last she made a little song, which she called:

"The woman with the crooked breast."

* * * * *

One night old Sara brought news.

Poppy's box was being packed. In two days she was going to be sent away in the post-cart. Poppy thrilled with joy, and had no foreboding until next day when she overheard Clara and Emily whispering together in the yard. It transpired that though they envied Poppy the journey to Boshof in the post-cart, they did not envy her subsequent career under the protection of their mother's sister, Aunt Clara Smit.

"Do you remember that time ma sent us there when Ina had the diphtheria? We never got anything but bread and dripping, and she was eating chops and steaks all the time."

"Yes," said Clara, "and remember how she used to beat _Katzi_, the little Hottentot girl, in bed every night for a week until the blood came, just because she broke a cup."

"Ha! ha!" they chirruped, "won't Miss Poppy get it _just_!"

"Yes, and mammer's going to give her something before she goes, too. She sent me to buy a _sjambok_ this morning, because pa's hidden his away, and when he's gone out to the 'Phoenix' to-night, she's going to have Poppy across the bed in front of her. You're to hold her head and me her feet."

"Tlk! Won't she get it!"

This interesting piece of news determined Poppy on a matter which had long been simmering in her mind. She decided at last that she would take no more beatings from Aunt Lena, and neither would she sample the quality of Aunt Clara Smit's charity. She would run away.

All that afternoon she lay turning the matter over, and later she took old Sara into her confidence for two reasons: old Sara must commandeer some food for her, and must also get for her the only thing she wanted to take away with her--a round green stone brooch which had belonged to her mother, and which Aunt Lena kept in her top drawer.

Poppy felt sure that with her mother's brooch on her she need fear nothing in the world; it was green, and therefore kindly disposed, as all green things were, being akin to trees.

It took a long while to beguile old Sara to obtain the brooch, for the old woman was very honest and she thought this looked too much like a stealing matter. Eventually she was persuaded, and a little after seven o'clock she brought it stealthily to the forage-house, together with a pocketful of food-scraps saved from her own portion of the evening meal.

After this, Poppy did not dare wait another instant. She knew that as soon as he had finished his supper, her uncle would light his pipe and stroll off to spend a cheerful evening in the billiard-room of the "Phoenix Hotel"; then they would come to fetch her indoors!

With a hasty farewell to old Sara, her only friend, she slipped out through the dark yard and ran swiftly up the street. Her direction was towards the _Uitspan_, a big bare place about half a mile from the town where wagons halted for a night before starting on a journey, or before bringing their loads into town in the morning. There was a big _Uitspan_ out beyond St. Michael's, and she made for that one, remembering there were always plenty of wagons there.

When she stole near it in the darkness, she counted eight wagons, four of which were loaded to depart, since their dissel-booms were turned away from the town.

There were several fires burning, and the fume of coffee was on the night air. Someone was making _as-kookies_ (ash-cakes) too, for a pleasant smell of burnt dough assailed Poppy's nose. Four Kaffir _boys_ were sitting round a three-legged pot, dipping into it and jabbering together, and by the light of another fire a white woman and three children were taking their evening meal. The wagon behind them was loaded with furniture and boxes, and by this Poppy was sure that they were a family on the move. She crept nearer to them, keeping in the shadow of the close-growing bushes. The dull red fires and the stars gave the only light there was.

"Ma," said one of the children at the fire, "I see a spook over there by the bushes." The mother's response was: "Here, you make haste and finish your coffee and get into the wagon. It's time you children were asleep. They're going to inspan at eleven and you'd better get a good sleep before the wagon starts creaking and jolting."

This was useful information to Poppy. Her plan was to follow the wagon when it started and keep near it until late the next day, when too far from Bloemfontein to be sent back.

She crouched lower among the bushes, and presently began to munch some of her oddments of food, while still she watched the family she meant to adopt. When they had finished their meal they first washed up their tin beakers and plates with water from a small _fykie_ which hung under the wagon; then everything was carefully put away into a wooden locker, and they prepared to retire for the night. The mother was a round-faced, good-natured-looking, half-Dutch colonial, evidently. She climbed sturdily into the tented wagon by the help of the brake and a little _reimpe_ ladder. Across the tent was swung a _cartel_ (thong mattress) and atop of this was a big comfortable mattress with pillows and blankets arranged ready for use. By the light of the lantern which the woman fixed to the roof of the tent, Poppy could see that the sides of the tent were lined with calico bags with buttoned-over flaps, all bulging with the things that would be needed on the journey. The woman proceeded to store away more things from a heap in the middle of the bed, some she put under the pillows, some under the mattress, and many were tied to the wooden ribs of the tent so that it presently resembled a Christmas-tree. Meantime the children clustered on the brake and the _reimpe_ ladder, fidgeting to climb into the snug-looking nest. The mother talked while she worked:

"Here, Alice! I'll put this pair of old boots into the end bag, they'll do for wearing in the veldt----"

"Oh, sis, ma! I hate those old boots, they hurt me--" expostulated Alice.

"Nonsense, how can they hurt you? You keep your new ones for Pretoria, anything'll do on the veldt. Now you all see where I'm putting the comb--and this beaker we'll keep up in your corner, Minnie, so we don't have to go to the locker every time we're thirsty. I hope that boy will hang the _fykie_ where we can reach it. Begin to take your boots off, Johnny. I'm not going to have you in here treading on my quilt with those boots; no one is to get in until they're _carl-foot_."

"I'll get _deviljies_ (thorns) in my feet if I take them off out here," says Johnny. "Can't I sit on the edge of the bed?"

"All right then, but keep your feet out. Minnie, take off that good ribbon and tie your hair with this piece of tape," etc.

Eventually they were all in the tent, lying in a row crossways, the mother by the opening as a sort of barricade. They did not undress--only loosened their clothes.

Everyone wanted to lie across the opening. They couldn't see anything at the back of the tent, they complained; only had to lie and stare at the things bobbing overhead.

"You never mind that," said the mother, arguing. "You've got three or four weeks to see the veldt and the oxen in. I'm going to lie here so that I can keep you children from falling out while we're trekking. Why I knew a woman once who let her baby lie on the outside, and in the middle of the night she woke up and heard an awful crunching under the wheels, and when she felt for the baby it wasn't there!" This story caused a great sensation, but presently Johnny asked how the baby's bones could crunch under the wheels "if it fell out behind the wagon!"

The mother considered for a moment, then said:

"It was the wheels of the wagon behind, of course, _dom-kop_."

But Johnny pointed out that a whole span of oxen would come before the wheels of the next wagon, and that the baby would be all trodden to bits before the wheels reached it.

"Oh, _Kgar! Sis!_" cried the sisters; and at this his mother told him amiably to shut his mouth and go to sleep.

But though she put out the lantern the talk still went on intermittently until replaced by snores.

The _boys_ and the transport-drivers all lay wrapped in their blankets, snoring too. Only afar the oxen could be heard moving as they grazed, and the bell on the neck of one of them clanked restlessly. The fires had died down to dim red spots. The watcher in the bushes was the only one awake in the camp. She feared that if she slept the family in the wagon might be up and away. Her mind was made up to accompany that good-natured-looking woman and her family to Pretoria, since that was where they were bound for. She would follow the wagons and join them when a long way from Bloemfontein, and her tale would be that she belonged to a wagon which had gone on in front. She would pretend that she had got lost, and ask to be taken on to rejoin her relations in Pretoria.

At about eleven o'clock the moon rose, but no one stirred in the camp. Suddenly the figure of a man arose, took a long whip from the side of a wagon, unwound it, walked a little way from the camp, swung it whistling softly round his head for a moment, then sent a frightful report ringing across the veldt. Afterwards he lay down again until a great crackling and trampling and shouting told that the oxen were in the camp with their herders hooting and yelling round them. In a moment other still figures were on their feet; a clamour arose of voices shouting, wooden yokes clattering, dissel-booms creaking; bullocks were called at by their names and sworn at individually:

"_Rooi-nek! Yoh Skelpot! com an da!_" (Redneck! You tortoise! come on there!)

"_Viljoen! Wat makeer jij?_" (Viljoen! What's wrong with _you_?)

Loud blows and kicks were heard and demands for missing oxen.

"_Jan, war is de Vaal-pans?_" (John, where is the yellow-belly?)

"_Ek saal yoh net now slaan, jou faarbont._" (I'll strike you in a minute, you baseborn.)

"_De verdomder Swart-kop!_"

Each wagon had a span of eighteen or twenty oxen, and as soon as the last pair was yoked, a small black boy, the _voerlooper_, would run to their heads, seize the leading _rein_ and turn them towards the road. Then came a tremendous crack of the driver's whip, a stream of oaths and oxen's names, intermingled and ending in:

"_Yak!_"

One by one the four wagons took the road, raising clouds of red dust, the drivers and boys running alongside.

Usually passenger-wagons go first in the line, but the wagon with Poppy's adopted family in it, started last, because _Swart-kop_, a big black-and-white ox, had been particularly fractious, and had delayed the operation of inspanning, putting the driver into a terrible passion. Poppy waited until his cursings and revilings were only faintly heard on the air, then slipping quietly through the camp which had returned to peaceful sleeping, she plunged into the clouds of dust.

Throughout the night hours she padded along, her throat and ears and mouth filled with the fine dirt, her eyes running and sore; afraid to get too near the wagons for fear of being seen; afraid to be too far behind for fear of she knew not what.

Towards dawn they passed through a narrow _sluit_. The water was filthy at the _drift_ when all the wagons had gone through it, but she left the road and found a clean place higher up where she thankfully drank and laved her begrimed face. As the dawn broke she could see that the veldt was well-bushed with clumps of rocks, and big ant-heaps here and there; there would be plenty of hiding-places when the wagons stopped.

Presently there were signs of a coming halt. The oxen slackened pace, the drivers began to call to each other, and the man who was evidently the _Baas_ of the convoy went off the road and inspected the ground.

Then a long loud:

"_Woa! An--nauw!_" passed along the line, each wagon took to the veldt, drawing up at about fifty yards from the road.

Thereafter came the outspanning, with the identical accompaniments of the inspanning. When the oxen had gone to seek water and food in charge of their herders, the _voerloopers_ departed to gather wood and _mis_ (dry cow-dung) for the fires, and the drivers unrolled their blankets and lay upon them resting, but not sleeping, until a meal had been prepared; someone began to play a concertina at this time. Afar from the encampment Poppy had found a big dry hole in the heart of a clump of bushes. The thorns tore her face and her clothes as she struggled through them, but in the hole at last she fell down and succumbed to the passion for sleep which overwhelmed her. She lay like a stone all through the day, hearing nothing until the loud clap of a whip pulled her out of her dreams.

"_Yak--Varns!_"

Half dead with weariness--stiff, wretched, hungry--she crept from her hiding-place and stumbled on her way, wrapped once more in the impenetrable dust.

On the night of the second day she discovered herself to the family in the tented wagon. Staggering from the bush at the side of the road she climbed on to the brake of the slowly moving wagon and appeared before the comfortable contented occupants--a filthy, tattered, unkempt vision; her face peaked and wan under the dirt, her eyes glazy. "Give me food and water," she whispered--her voice had never returned since Ina's death.

After one long stare, and amidst screams from the children, the woman pulled her up into the tent, bade the children make room, and quickly found water and biscuits.

Poppy ate and drank ravening, then lay back and cried weakly, the big hot tears washing white streaks down her cheeks. The woman with an eye to her clean bedclothes, proceeded to sponge her face with water in a tin beaker, and told Alice to take off the tattered boots and stockings. She questioned Poppy the while, but Poppy cared for nothing but sleep. She lay back and slept even as they washed her. About noon she awoke and found herself still lying on the big bed, and the woman was standing on the brake with coffee and a plate of stew.

"Wake up and eat this, girl; and now you are better tell me where you come from and where you're going, hey?"

Poppy, between eating and drinking, recited her tale: she was travelling with her father and brothers and sisters to the Transvaal; had wandered away from the wagons and got lost on the veldt--believed she had been wandering for a week; her name she fancifully gave as Lucy Gray (it seemed to wake no echoes in the minds or memories of her listeners); no doubt, she said, these wagons would catch the others up in a few days. She begged the woman to take care of her in the meantime. She would help with the cooking and the children--she wouldn't eat much.

The woman regarded her suspiciously once or twice, but she was stupid as well as good-natured and had not the wit to find flaws in the well-thought-out tale. She consented to fall in with Poppy's request--in common humanity she could do little else--found some clean clothes for her and a pair of old boots, and gave her _fat_ to smear on her wounds and sore feet.

But first Poppy had to be passed before the _Baas_ of the wagons--the big fierce-looking Boer who fortunately was not at all fierce, only very stupid, and although he refused to believe her tale, turning to Mrs. Brant and remarking briefly: "_Sij le!_" (she lies!) he could not offer any suggestion as to what the truth might be; nor did he make any objection to Mrs. Brant's plans; so Poppy was outcast no more. She became one of a family, and speedily made herself so useful to Mrs. Brant that the good woman was glad to have her.

Followed many long happy weeks. Happy even when the wet-season swooped down on them and they had to wait on the banks of swollen rivers fireless for days; or remain stuck in a mudhole for hours, until their wheels could be dug out or pulled out by three spans of oxen combined, while mosquitoes bit and swarmed over them, leaving a festering sore for every bite they gave; even under the heavy sweltering _sail_ that was flung over them at nights to keep rain out, and which also kept the air out and made the small tent like a pest-house; even when the food gave out and they had to rely on what they could get at the scattered farms.

In spite of all the mishaps, everyone was kind and good-natured. No one offered blows or taunts to Poppy, and her starved heart revived a little and began to hold up its head under the gentle rain of kindliness and friendliness. Then, the glamour of travel was upon her for the first time. Never before had she seen the hills, the mountains, the great rolling spaces of veldt, the rivers sweeping and boiling down their wide ravines. It was most wonderful and beautiful, too, to wake every dawn and step out of the wagon to a fresh world. Where last night had been a hill, to-morrow would be a rushing river, befringed with mimosa, whose odour had been sweet on the breeze all the day before. The next day would find them on a bare plain, with no stick or stone to give shelter from the burden of the sun or the rain, and the next they would lie in the purple shadow of a mountain, on which were scarlet geraniums as tall as trees, and strange flowers shaped like birds and insects grew everywhere.

And oh! the fresh glory of the morning dews! The smell of the wood smoke on the air! The wide open empty world around them and the great silence into which the small human sounds of the camp fell and were lost like pebbles thrown into the sea! Happy, rain-soaked, sun-bitten days! Bloemfontein and misery were a long way behind. Poppy's sad songs were all forgotten; new ones sprang up in her heart, songs flecked with sunlight and bewreathed with wild flowers.

* * * * *

But a cloud was on the horizon. The convoy of wagons drew at last near its destination. Poppy began to be haunted at nights with the fear of what new trouble must await her there. Where would she go? What would she do? How could she face kind Mrs. Brant with her tale of parents and friends proved false? These frightful problems filled the nights in the creaking wagon with terror. The misty bloom that had fallen upon her face during the weeks of peace and content, vanished, and haggard lines of anxiety and strain began to show.

"Child, you look peaky," said good Mrs. Brant. "What'll your ma say? I must give you a Cockle's pill."

But Poppy grew paler and more peaky.

Two days' _trek_ from Pretoria she was missed at inspan time. Long search was made. The wagons even waited a whole day and night for her; the _boys_ called and the drivers sent cracks of their great whips volleying and echoing for miles, as a signal of their whereabouts in case she had wandered far and lost her bearings. At night they made enormous fires to guide her to their camping-places. But she never returned. It was then and for the first time that two little lines of verse came into the memory of Alice, the eldest girl, who had been at a good school. She recited them to the family, who thought them passing strange and prophetic:

"But the sweet face of Lucy Gray
Will never more be seen."

* * * * *

Unfortunately, after leaving the wagons and hiding herself in a deep gulch, Poppy had fallen asleep, and that so heavily after her many nights of sleepless worry, that she did not awake for more than fourteen hours. When she did wake she found that some poisonous insect or reptile had stung one of her feet terribly: it was not painful, but enormously swollen and discoloured, and she found it difficult to get along. The wagons had gone and she could never catch up with them again, even if she wished. On the second night she heard, many miles away, the cracking of the whips and saw little glow-worms of light that might have been the flare of fires lighted to show her the way back to the wagons; and her spirit yearned to be with those friendly faces and kindly fires. She wept and shivered and crouched fearsomely in the darkness.

The next day it rained: merciless, savage, hammering rain. Sometimes she wandered in it, fancying herself wandering in a forest of trees, all with stems as thick as a rain-drop; sometimes it was so strong she could lean against it; sometimes she thought she was a moth beating against glass, trying, trying to get out.

Another night came.

Through most of that she lay prone on her face, thinking--believing--hoping that she was dead and part of the earth she lay on.

And, indeed, the greater part of her was mud.

She had long ago lost the road. She supposed she must be in the Transvaal somewhere; but at this time, half-delirious from pain, hunger, and terror, she believed herself back near Bloemfontein--seemed to recognise the hills outside the town. Terrified, she took another direction, falling sometimes and unable to rise again until she had slept where she lay. Whenever she saw bushes with berries or fruits on them she gathered and ate.

Sometimes from her hiding-places she could see Kaffirs pass singly, or in small parties; but after searching their faces, she let them pass. Even in her delirium something warned her not to make herself known.

One night, it seemed to her weeks after she had left the wagons, she was suddenly dazzled by the sight of a red light shining quite near her. She gathered up her last remnants of strength and walked towards it; she believed she urged and ran--in reality she merely drifted by the help of a friendly wind that happened to be blowing that way. At last she saw that it was not one--but many lamps and candles shining through the windows of a house. But the windows themselves could be only dimly seen through the leaves of a tree, which overhung the house and threw long claw-like shadows everywhere. Next, her broken feet knew gravel under them: white walls were before her, too--and green doors and green window-shutters, all laced and latticed with the shadows of one great tree that stood like a monster in the path by the big door. The lights that shone out and dazzled showed her that the tree was very, very green, with a myriad strange scarlet eyes glowing in it; eyes that glowed with an alert brightness that was not friendly. Poppy had always loved trees and believed them to be her friends, but this tree frightened her. Nevertheless she crept closer to the biggest, brightest window of the house, and peered in through the glass panes, a little dulled and dimmed by the ever-beating, everlasting rain. She saw a man sitting at a table spread with beautiful shining vases of flowers, dishes of food, plates and glasses that glittered, fruit--two black _boys_ waited on him, dressed in white uniforms, and through an open doorway a tan-skinned old woman with a white _dook_ could be seen speaking to one of the _boys_--handing him a dish that flamed with little blue flames. The man at the table leaned back in his chair and faced the window. If it had not been that she believed herself dying, or perhaps already dead, Poppy would rather have gone back to the veldt than into the house where that face was master, for it terrified her even as the faces of the Kaffirs on the veldt had done. The man was not ugly; but his mouth was cruel and bitter, and his eyes were of the same hard, cold blue as the stripe on old Sara's coffee-basin. And across his face, from the left eye to the corner of his mouth, was a long, raw, newly-healed scar.

It seemed to Poppy that while she stood watching this man, something inside her shrivelled up and blew away from her like a leaf in the wind. It came into her head then that, after all, she would not stay here at this house; it would be better to go back to the veldt. Wearifully she stepped down from the high steps she had climbed, reached the green door, and then her hobbling feet would go no further.

She sank on the steps and her head knocked against the door. At once dogs barked inside, voices came near, the door opened, letting strong light fall across the face of Poppy, now lying on the floor. She saw black faces around her and heard native voices crying, "Wha!" in astonishment. Then someone lifted her up very strongly and held her under a hanging lamp and looked at her. She saw through failing eyes that it was the man with the scar.

"Who are you, child?" he asked, and his voice was quite kind and friendly.

Again the feeling of terror and panic swept over the child's heart; but she was very tired. She believed she was already dead. Her head fell back.

"My soul is like a shrivelled leaf," is what she answered.