came yearly overlaid with a thicker coat of dust. With the gathering dirt and the neglected wood-work, the slates that leaked and the harling that fell off in patches, the old house seemed to have lost its self-respect and to be a kind of poor relation of the tree. Its aspect became more and more dejected and plebeian, till even the two old companions themselves could scarcely believe that they had looked on prouder circumstances.

Nearly a century had crept away since they passed out of their owner's hands, and it seemed as though the old laird's faith in his bit timber was a mere fancy after all. The farmer was now beginning to complain that the mansion was too big and in too illkempt a state, and to hint that its stones would build him a more suitable and water-tight dwelling. Then after its support was lost the life of the old tree would not be worth two winters' purchase. And that would be the final end of mansion and plantations and all.

Fortunately the plane was unaware of this proposal, or even he would scarcely have donned his leaves so gallantly that spring. It was a pleasant season, with long placid sunshiny days, and all through the brief nights the embers of sunset illuminating the northern sky till they became the kindling of the dawn. A certain inquisitive stranger who came to poke about the house and farm seemed to find this weather hard to leave, for he kept

hanging round the neighbourhood for days, and almost looked as if he wished to settle there. But at last he went away, and nothing went on happening just as it had happened for so many years.

At last a change began, a change that sent a shiver from the topmost twig to the lowermost root of the old planetree. Early one morning men came into the courtyard with ladders which they set against the sides of the house, and slate by slate they began to remove the roof. That afternoon, amidst a bustle which seemed to the tree the last sign of men's comings and goings that he was to look upon, the farmer and his family packed up and took their departure. And then the unroofing went on apace. First the slates and then the timbers were taken off and piled about the court, and the dark weather-stained walls were all that was left between the planetree and the enemies who would come with the equinox to make short work of him at last. had lived and maintained his courage through all all these hundred and fifty years to be treated like this!

He

But just as these gloomy reflections are computed to have visited him, and just as it is practically certain that he was beginning to droop & little in despair, a most astonishing event occurred. Instead of proceeding to demolish the walls, the men returned with new and more substantial beams and began to put a fresh and sound roof over the discon

solate mansion. Then the walls were cleaned and cemented and harled till they appeared exactly as they were when the tree first looked out from the corner of the court. Next several van-loads of furniture were deposited at the front door and disappeared gradually through it; and finally the inquisitive stranger returned to dwell in the house his extravagant old forefather had built, and began like him to plant unsuspicious saplings in the paddock and consider his money well invested. Only, fortunately, he had a little more of it to invest. He also soon began to regard the old tree as his

most treasured possession, and when he visited "the South" to refer to it as the timber on his estate.

It was originally intended that a number of morals should have been exhibited by this story, but the occasions for introducing them seem somehow to have been missed.

Also one cannot, unfortunately, make the tree marry any one, but in proof of this otherwise happy ending, I can confidently refer the curious to the flourishing state at this very day of the mansion, the proprietor, and the tree by their sea-shore in the Windy Islands.

2 x

VOL. CLXXVI.-NO. MLXIX.

THE business was something before my time, but I can remember several versions of it, which were commonly current when I first came into the

Dopfontein district. It was not much of a tale as a general thing, except that, if you happened to have a strain of hot blood in you, it discovered a quality of very picturesque pathos. However, as you shall see, only the tail-end of the story was generally known, and it was the Vrouw Grobelaar, the transmitter of chronicles, who divulged it to Katje and myself one evening in its proper proportions.

The

As I first heard it the tale was about thus. The drift across the Dolf Spruit, below the Zwaartkop, was a ragged gash in the earth, hidden from all approaches by dense bushes of wacht een beetje thorn. spruit was here throttled between banks of worn stone, and the water roared over the drift at a depth that made it impassable to foot-farers. Its name, Morder Drift (Murder Ford), was secured to it no less by its savage aspect than by the incident associated with it. One morning a Kaffir brought news to a farm of a strange thing at the drift, a tale of violent death at oriminal hands. Straightway four men got to horse and rode over. Arriving,

they found their information justified in a strange fashion. Seated in the deep southern approach to the water was a Boer woman, a young one, pillowing on her lap the head of a murdered man, whose body oozed blood from а dozen wounds. The woman paid no heed to the approach of the Burghers, and they, on nearing the body, observed that her eyes were fixed across the spruit, and that a smile, a dreadful twisted smile smile of contempt, ruled her face as though frozen there.

The woman was recognised as a girl of good Boer family who had recently married in opposition to the strong objections of her family: the dead man at her feet was soon identified as all that was left of her husband.

That was the tale: it ended there like a broken string, for while the matter was under investigation at the hands of the feldcornet, a Kaffir chief in the Magaliesberg commenced to assert himself, and the commando of the district was called out to wait on him. And there the matter dropped, for during the two years that elapsed before she died the woman never uttered a word. But (and here, for me, at any rate, the wonder of the story commenced) every day and all day,

come fine or rain, sun or storm, there she would sit in the drift, damming the traitor's road of escape with that smile the Burghers had shuddered at. The scene, and the unspeakable sadness of it, used to govern my dreams.

as

I was telling Katje the story, for she said she had never heard it, but this I since learned to have been untrue. At first the conversation had been varied even to the point of inanity, but in time it turned such conversations will, you know to the wonder and beauty of the the character of women in general. I think it must have been at this stage that the Vrouw Grobelaar, who had been dozing like a dog, with one ear awake, commenced to listen; and I have always thought the better of the good lady for not annihilating the situation with some ponderously arch comment, as was a habit of hers.

When my tale was finished, though, the contempt of the artist for the mere artisan moved her to complete the record.

"You are wrong when you say the truth never came to light," she said. "I know the whole story."

The due request was proffered.

"It is not a tale to carry abroad," observed the old lady. "It concerns some of my family. The woman was Christina van der Poel, a half-sister of my second husband, and what I am now telling you is the confession of Koos van der Poel, her brother, on the day he died. I remember he was troubled with an idea that he would be buried near her, and that she would cry out on him from her grave to his."

The suggestion, as you must agree, quite justified Katje's moving closer to me.

"It was like this," resumed the Vrouw Grobelaar, after an expressionless glance at the two of us. "Christina was a wild fanciful girl, with an eye to every stranger that offsaddled at the farm, Katje; and she had barely a civil word to waste on a bashful Burgher. I can't say I ever saw much in her myself. She was a tall young woman, with a face that drew the eye, as it were; but she was restless and unquiet in her motions, and, to my mind, too thin and leggy. But men have no taste in these things; and if Christina had been of a decent turn, she might have had her pick of all the unmarried men within a day's ride, and there used to be some very good men about here.

"But, as I said, she kept them all on the far side of the fence, and for a long time their only comfort was in seeing no one else take her. Till one day a surprising thing happened.

"A tall smart man rode into