"But you are a Boer maisie, Chrissie. And you must not forget it."

"No, I shall never forget it," she said slowly, "and because of it I will marry you, if you still wish it, Carol. I do not love you, but I will be a good wife to you."

"Oh, thank you, thank you, my Chrissie. I too will be a good man to you. You will see."

The list of killed and injured on the railway workings continued, and by the time the bridge of the Kat River was nearing completion and the line across Jackalsfontein almost laid, it made heavy reading for some wives and mothers, and a Government whose business it was to compensate them. The annoying part of the matter was that there were no shoulders upon which blame for the chapter of accidents could justly be laid. "Acts of Providence" cannot be quarrelled with. Though why "the Hand of God" should have fallen so heavily upon that special part of the line was incomprehensible to the gangers, who were inclined to insinuate that Lucifer (aided by a certain strange and monstrous-looking old man who sat eternally watching from his stoep) had more to do with the matter.

Nick Retief’s armchair no longer accommodated him. The large oak and leather settle from the kitchen had been brought out and in its broad seat he sat daily, his great head sunk on his breast, staring with blue eyes grown dim. He was now enormously swollen and of an extraordinary vivid colour. Rage and bitter anger had so poisoned his nature that it seemed, even as Chrissie in her simple way expressed it, as if his blood had "turned" or decomposed in his veins. Yet, despite its grotesqueness, there was something heart-rendingly pathetic in the figure of this old-time Boer who had fought to defeat Progress and been defeated instead.

He had to be helped to bed now, with Chrissie on one side and Shangaan Jim, his oldest Kaffir boy, supporting him on the other. But there came a night when they could not lead him to his bed; his bulk had so much increased during the day that it was in vain to try and pass him through the front door. Chrissie burst into tears.

"Oh! foy toch, my poor Poppey, what are we to do now?"

"Bring out my mattress. I will sleep here where I can see my land," said the old man.

So they brought out his mattress, and he went to bed on the stoep. Shangaan Jim sat by him through the night, and, long after she had retired, Chrissie could hear his mumbling voice relating with many clicks and ejaculations tales of when he had worked in the mines at the Diamond Fields.

The next day at Nick Retief’s command the big iron and brass bedstead in which his wife had died was set up on the stoep. He slept in it, and again Shangaan Jim stayed by him relating strange stories. The morning after, the old man did not rise from his bed; only called to them to bring many pillows, and prop him up, so that he could see.

"It is nearly finished," he muttered staring across the blue-gum stumps that now were bursting into great clusters of silvery blue leaves, "and I am nearly finished too."

The two thin lines of steel glittering under the moonbeams had, in fact, almost reached the eastern boundary-line of Jackalsfontein. Soon the old man’s eyes would be pained no longer by the piles of wood and steel, the tents and paraphernalia of the camp. Shangaan Jim brought the news that all would be removed next day. Chrissie found him whispering by the bedside as the sun went down, and wondered to see a smile on her father’s face for the first time in many months—​if that strange distortion of bloated and discoloured flesh could be called a smile?

"Shall I come sit by you to-night for a while, Poppey?" she asked, leaning tenderly over him. "And let Shangaan go to his hut?"

"Yes," he said, "let Shangaan go." He looked up at the big Kaffir, and Chrissie fancied she saw a glance of some significance pass between them, but thought she must be mistaken.

At any rate, Shangaan Jim went away, and she sat talking to her father for a long while, listening preciously to every broken muttered word that fell from him, for she was well aware that the end was near.

He spoke of her marriage with Piet. It was not such a marriage as he had hoped for her. One of those pat-looping Uyses! But still, Piet was a good fellow, and the only one of her suitors who had remained faithful, now that the money was all gone! Piet would be a good husband, but she must look after the farm, or he would be robbed and lose it, and have to retire to the back lands and the bad veld like all the Uys clan who were bad managers, though they were good men. He made her promise that she would marry Piet soon, so that when the war broke out she could follow him to the field if need be.

"As your mother would have followed me," he said, and looked up at the pale still face of his child. For, in proportion to his great increase of colour and stature she had grown whiter and thinner. Grief for his condition and some other secret sorrow brought tears to wet her pillow many a night, underlined her eyes, and carved faint hollows in her cheeks. Bubbling youth was quite gone out of Chrissie.

As the night wore on, the old man, stirring and turning on his pillows, grew more restless. He panted and gasped and some strange excitement seemed tormenting him, making him roll and struggle like a great helpless beetle. And always he strained to keep his head high on the pillows so that he might stare, and stare across the land. Sometimes he held his breath and seemed to be listening.

It must have been near midnight when a tremendous explosion shook the earth, breaking every pane of glass in the windows behind them, rattling the old farmhouse as though it were made of reeds, and crashing and booming across the empty veld like the crack of doom.

Suddenly, down by the workers' encampment, flames sprang up and cries and groans were heard. Chrissie, recovered from her first shock of terror and amazement, sprang up.

"Father!" she cried, then stood still staring. The old man was sitting up in bed, his eyes alight with a dreadful fire.

"Now, I can die in peace," he shouted. "Jim knew what to do with their dynamite tent! Good boy, Jim! Didn’t I warn them that I would blow them off, if they came meddling with my land?"

With a great shout of laughter that rang across the veld like a bell, he fell back upon his pillows. There was a terrible gurgling sound in his throat, and all was still.

One long look at the dead face, then Chrissie ran down the steps and sprang across the veld. Men’s forms were moving hither and thither, carrying the dead and wounded away from the raging flames. Groans resounded everywhere, and there were bitter cries for water. To one such cry, in a voice she knew, Chrissie flew like an arrow from a bow.

She found him lying where the explosion had thrown him, far down the river bank, shattered, broken, dying; and when she had given him water, she kissed his lips, and baring her breast let his head lie there, sobbing out his life’s blood against her heart.