“Do you and Ralph go to the bush-veldt with the cattle to-morrow,” I answered, “and leave me to deal with the Scotchmen.”

“Well,” said Jan, “I consent, for who can stand up against so many words, and the Lord knows that to lose Ralph would have broken my heart as it would have broken that girl’s, perhaps more so, since girls change their fancies, but I am too old to change.  Come here, my children.”

They came, and he laid one of his big hands upon the head of each of them, saying:—­

“May the God in Heaven bless you both, who to me are one as dear as the other, making you happy with each other for many long years, and may He turn aside from you and from us the punishment that is due to all of us because, on account of our great love, we are holding you back, Ralph, from the home, the kin and the fortune to which you were born.”  Then he kissed each of them on the forehead and let them go.

“If there be any punishment for that which is no sin, on my head be it,” said Ralph, “since never would I have gone from here by my own will.”

“Aye, aye,” answered Jan, “but who can take account of the talk of a lad in love?  Well, we have committed the sin and we must bear the sorrow.  Now I go out to see to the kraaling of the cattle, which we will drive off to the bush-veldt to-morrow at dawn, for I will have naught to do with these Scotchmen; your mother must settle with them as she wills, only I beg of her that she will tell me nothing of the bargain.  Nay, do not come with me, Ralph; stop you with your dear, for to-morrow you will be parted for a while.”

So he went, and did not return again till late, and we three sat together and made pretense to be very happy, but somehow were a little sad, for Jan’s words about sin and sorrow stuck in our hearts, as the honest words of a stupid, upright man are apt to do.

Now on the morrow at dawn, as had been arranged, Jan and Ralph rode away to the warm veldt with the cattle, leaving me and Suzanne to look after the farm.  Three days later the Scotchmen came, and then it was that for love of Ralph and for the sake of the happiness of my daughter I sinned the greatest sin of all my life—­the sin that was destined to shape the fates of others yet unborn.

I was seated on the stoep in the afternoon when I saw three white men and some Cape boys, their servants, riding up to the house.

“Here come those who would steal my boy from me,” I thought to myself, and, like Pharaoh, I hardened my heart.

Now in those days my sight was very good, and while the men were yet some way off I studied them all and made up my mind about them.  First there was a large young man of five-and-twenty or thereabouts, and I noted with a sort of fear that he was not unlike to Ralph.  The eyes were the same and the shape of the forehead, only this gentleman had a weak, uncertain mouth, and I judged that he was very good-humoured,