"Oompie mustn’t drive to church like that any longer," said Carol decisively. "It is unlucky."

"Ah! unlucky? I am unlucky enough," glowered Oom Nick and reflected awhile in his beard while Carol drank more coffee and looked at Chrissie with his brown eyes which became very gentle and shy the moment he was not discussing horses. Chrissie inquired for his mother and sisters and brothers, naming each separately. Braddon tattooed the table, bored and vaguely irritated. At last, the old man got up and went down to the horses and began examining them minutely from mouth to hoof, jeering all the time and expostulating with Uys who had followed him.

The engineer and Chrissie left alone sat a long time in silence apparently listening to the haggling and jeering below them, but in reality listening to queer little drumlike sounds going on within themselves.

"May I bring you the photo when it is finished?" Braddon said at last in a low voice.

She laughed her little bubbling laugh.

"You see how it is with Poppa—​he does not like the railway."

He looked at her steadily.

"You mean I will not be welcome here?"

"Poppa will not welcome you," said Chrissie with the Greuze look. "Have another cup of coffee?"

Her father and Uys were returning to the stoep. Evidently some arrangement had been come to, but they were still haggling.

"Come on, Oom, you don’t want that red ox, now, it will pair with one I have and that will let you off another five pounds. Then I will take your old bays for 55 pounds and you will have only to pay me 40 pounds cash."

"Forty cash!" complained Nick. "It is too much."

"No, no, Uncle. It is not too much—​you know that good enough. I couldn’t sell for less, even to Miss Chrissie’s father."

He looked with his shy brown eyes at the girl and she smiled back. Braddon got up quickly.

"Well, I must go. Good-bye, Oom."

The old man scowled at him but shook hands.

"Good-day, kerel."

"Good-day, Miss Retief."

"Good-day, Mr Braddon."

Perhaps some subtle message passed from her hand to his for his eyes cleared. He went down from the stoep, untied his horse, and mounted. It was a good horse and he sat on it as only a born rider can sit. If Chrissie’s good figure could not be hidden neither could Braddon’s horsemanship, and that is an accomplishment which Boer girls, in common with most other girls, admire. He was well aware of Chrissie’s glance fixed upon him as he rode away, swaying easily and gracefully in his saddle. He was not quite sure why the fact was so pleasing to him, but he whistled a gay little air, and the world looked a good place to him, and life much more attractive than it had looked an hour ago.

Six months later, Nick Retief sat again on his stoep gazing with sombre eyes before him. At a casual glance all seemed unchanged, but a trained observer would have detected two profound differences: the landscape was no longer naked, and the old Boer had grown markedly older.

His beard and hair showed great patches of white amidst their shaggy sandiness, the old eyes were bloodshot and full of strain, the folds of skin sheathing them reddened and weary. It was the sight they looked upon that made them weary: a line of tents not five hundred yards from the stoep, some tin shanties, huge piles of sleepers and rails, and a trail of pitched-up rocks and yellowy-grey earth. The gangers were at work on the business of bridging the Kat River and laying the railway line across Jackalsfontein.

The old veld eyes that stared at that hated sight had seen many strange things since the morning when Braddon made his first appearance at Jackalsfontein. At last they had looked upon the sea, and the ships upon it, and the men that go in the ships; upon tram-cars and hansom cabs and streets crowded with fashionable women. Incidentally they had seen the inside of a Law Court, not once but many times.

On six several occasions Nick had donned his black stove-pipe hat and driven the Clan-William bays acquired from Carol Uys to Piquetberg and been accompanied from thence to Cape Town by Frickie de Villiers the slim. But all the sights his eyes had there beheld brought him no solace, nor a passing thrill of interest. He had been at grapples with the Government; absorbed in the great fight to keep silent and naked the acres that he loved. And the Government had defeated him. The railway had come!

Money had flowed like water, and it was not Government money. Little was now left of the original 2000 pounds that once had lain snug in the paraffin tin under the bed of the defunct Mrs Retief. To drag a case from the ordinary courts to the Supreme Court of the land and from thence to appeal to the House of Assembly does not cost nothing. Neither do the services of such slim ones of the earth as Frickie de Villiers, and a firm of Cape Town solicitors (who were Frickie’s cousins) and, finally, an eminent Q.C. (who was Frickie’s uncle) cost nothing. Nothing costs nothing when it comes to meddling with the law. Nick knew this now to his cost. Knew too that governments can be vindictive as well as arrogant. He had never heard of such a person as Lord Chesterfield, but of one Chesterfieldism at least he was now in a position to prove the truth: