“Ralph,” said my husband, “you know that you are not of our blood; we found you cast up on the beach like a storm-fish and took you in, and you grew dear to us; yes, although you are English or Scotch, which is worse, for if the English bully us the Scotch bully us and cheat us into the bargain.  Well, your parents were drowned, and have been in Heaven for a long time, but I am sorry to say that all your relations were not drowned with them.  At first, however, they took no trouble to hunt for you when we should have been glad enough to give you up.”

“No,” broke in Suzanne and I with one voice, and I added, “How do you dare to tell such lies in the face of the Lord, Jan?”

“——­When it would not have been so bad to give you up,” he went on, correcting himself.  “But now it seems that had you lived you would have inherited estates, or titles, or both.”

“Is the boy dead then?” I asked.

“Be silent, wife, I mean—­had he lived a Scotchman.  Therefore, having made inquiries, and learned that a lad of your name and age had been rescued from a shipwreck and was still alive among the Boers in the Transkei, they have set to work to hunt you, and are coming here to take you way, for I tell you that I heard it in the dorp yonder.”

“Is it so?” said Ralph, while Suzanne hung upon his words with white face and trembling lips.  “Then I tell you that I will not go.  I may be English, but my home is here.  My own father and mother are dead, and these strangers are nothing to me, nor are the estates and titles far away anything to me.  All that I hold dear on the earth is here in the Transkei,” and he glanced at Suzanne, who seemed to bless him with her eyes.

“You talk like a fool,” said Jan, but in a voice which was full of joy that he could not hide, “as is to be expected of an ignorant boy.  Now I am a man who has seen the world, and I know better, and I tell you that although they are an accursed race, still it is a fine thing to be a lord among the English.  Yes, yes, I know the English lords.  I saw one once when I went to Capetown; he was the Governor there, and driving through the streets in state, dressed as bravely as a blue-jay in his spring plumage, while everybody took off their hats to him, except I, Jan Botmar, who would not humble myself thus.  Yet to have such clothes as that to wear every day, while all the people salute you and make a path for you, is not a thing to be laughed at.  See boy, it just comes to this:  here you are poor and little, there you may be rich and much, and it is our duty not to stand in your road, though it may break our hearts to lose you.  So you had best make up your mind to go away with the damned Scotchmen when they come, though I hope that you will think kindly of us when you get to your own country.  Yes, yes, you shall go, and what is more, you may take my best horse to ride away on, the thoroughbred schimmel, and my new black felt hat that I bought in the dorp.  There, that is done with, praise be to God, and I am going out, for this place is so thick with smoke that I can’t see my own hand,” and he rose to go, adding that if the two Scotchmen did not want a bullet through them, it would be as well if they kept out of his way when they came upon the farm.