David galloped the last furlongs with a tightened rein, and froth snowed from the bit.  He pulled up in the yard and slipped from the saddle.  Christina saw again on his face the white stricken look and the furrowed frown that had stared on Frikkie’s death.  David stood with the bridle in his hand and the horse’s muzzle against his arm and looked around.  He saw Christina coming toward him with quick steps, and little Paul, abandoning the skellpot, running to greet him.  He staggered and drew his hand across his forehead.

Christina had trouble to make him speak.  “A dream,” he kept saying, “an evil dream.”

“A lying dream,” suggested Christina anxiously.

“Yes,” he hastened to add, “a lying dream.”

“About—­about little Paul?” was her timid question.

David was silent for a while, and then answered.  “I saw him dead,” he replied, with a shudder.  “God!  I saw it as plain as I saw him a moment ago in the kraal.”

They heard the child’s gleeful shout the same instant.  “I’ve got you!  I’ve got you!” he cried from without.

“He has a water-tortoise,” explained Christina with a smile.  “Paul,” she called aloud, “come indoors.”

“Ja,” shouted the child, and they heard him run up the steps of the stoep.

“Look,” he said, standing at the door, “I found this in the grass.  What sort is it, father?”

David saw something lithe and sinuous in the child’s hands, and stiffened in every limb.  Paul had a skaapstikker in his grip, the green-and-yellow death-snake that abounds in the veldt.  Its head lay on his arm, its pin-point eyes maliciously agleam, and the child gripped it by the middle.  Christina stood petrified, but the boy laughed and dandled the reptile in glee.

“Be still, Paul,” said David, in a voice that was new to him—­“be still; do not move.”

The child looked up at him in astonishment.  “Why?” he began.

“Be still,” commanded David, and went over to him cautiously.  The serpent’s evil head was raised as he approached, and it hissed at him.  Paul stood quite quiet, and David advanced his naked hand to his certain death and the delivery of his child.  The reptile poised, and as David snatched at it, it struck—­but on his sleeve.  The next instant was a delirious vision of writhing green and yellow; there was a cry from Paul, and the snake was on the floor.  David crushed it furiously with his boot.

Christina snatched the child.  “Did it bite you, Paul!” she screamed.  “Did it bite you?”

The boy shook his head, but David interposed with a voice of thunder.

“Of course it did!” he vociferated with blazing eyes; “what else did my dream point to?  But we’ll fight with God yet.  Bring me the child, Christina.”

On the plump forearm of Paul they found two minute punctures and two tiny points of blood.  David drew his knife, and the child shrieked and struggled.