“To accompany me!  Why, you are old, you are not worth five shillings a month and your scoff (food).  You are a shrunken old brandy cask that will not even hold water.”

Hans grinned right across his ugly face.

“Oh!  Baas, I am old, but I am clever.  All these years I have been gathering wisdom.  I am as full of it as a bee’s nest is with honey when the summer is done.  And, Baas, I can stop those leaks in the cask.”

“Hans, it is no good, I don’t want you.  I am going into great danger.  I must have those about me whom I can trust.”

“Well, Baas, and who can be better trusted than Hans?  Who warned you of the attack of the Quabies on Maraisfontein, and so saved the life of——­”

“Hush!” I said.

“I understand.  I will not speak the name.  It is holy not to be mentioned.  It is the name of one who stands with the white angels before God; not to be mentioned by poor drunken Hans.  Still, who stood at your side in that great fight?  Ah! it makes me young again to think of it, when the roof burned; when the door was broken down; when we met the Quabies on the spears; when you held the pistol to the head of the Holy One whose name must not be mentioned, the Great One who knew how to die.  Oh!  Baas, our lives are twisted up together like the creeper and the tree, and where you go, there I must go also.  Do not turn me away.  I ask no wages, only a bit of food and a handful of tobacco, and the light of your face and a word now and again of the memories that belong to both of us.  I am still very strong.  I can shoot well—­well, Baas, who was it that put it into your mind to aim at the tails of the vultures on the Hill of Slaughter yonder in Zululand, and so saved the lives of all the Boer people, and of her whose holy name must not be mentioned?  Baas, you will not turn me away?”

“No,” I answered, “you can come.  But you will swear by the spirit of my father, the Predikant, to touch no liquor on this journey.”

“I swear by his spirit and by that of the Holy One,” and he flung himself forward on to his knees, took my hand and kissed it.  Then he rose and said in a matter-of-fact tone, “If the Baas can give me two blankets, I shall thank him, also five shillings to buy some tobacco and a new knife.  Where are the Baas’s guns?  I must go to oil them.  I beg that the Baas will take with him that little rifle which is named Intombi (Maiden), the one with which he shot the vultures on the Hill of Slaughter, the one that killed the geese in the Goose Kloof when I loaded for him and he won the great match against the Boer whom Dingaan called Two-faces.”

“Good,” I said.  “Here are the five shillings.  You shall have the blankets and a new gun and all things needful.  You will find the guns in the little back room and with them those of the Baas, my companion, who also is your master.  Go see to them.”