Then he wrote some final letters relating to his worldly affairs, the predikant having obtained for him, at some difficulty, the requisite materials. He left a few lines for Stephanus De la Rey, and more than a few for Aletta. Even then of the girl’s presence in the camp Mynheer Albertyn did not inform him, and the reason lay in Aletta’s own wish. She had decided not to see him. She had saved him—as she thought—and it were better not to see him. It was part of the bargain with Adrian, likewise it would bring back all too forcibly the last time she had seen him.
“Well, Mynheer,” said Colvin at length, “now we have put all that straight we can chat for a little. It seems rather selfish keeping you up all night like this, and it was very good of you to come. You won’t regret it either. But you don’t have to sit up every night with a poor devil who’s going to be shot at sunrise anyhow.”
This cheerful calmness under the circumstances was clean outside the predikant’s experience. He felt as though he must be dreaming. It was unreal. Here was a man whose life had reached the limits of a few hours, who was to be led forth to die in cold blood, in the full glow of his health and strength, yet chatting away as unconcernedly as if he were at home in his own house. Jesting, too, for Colvin had touched on the comic element, not forgetting to entertain Mynheer with the joke about old Tant’ Plessis and Calvinus. So the night wore on.
The doomed man slept at last, slumbering away the fast waning hours that remained to him of life.
[a/]
Chapter Fifteen.
Love’s Triumph.
The sun had mounted above the eastern end of the Wildschutsberg, and now an arrowy beam, sweeping down from the gilded crags, pierced like a searchlight the cold grey mists of early dawn.
The burgher camp was astir, roused by no bugle call or roll of drum; opening the day by no parade of flashing accoutrements or inspection of arms. Yet every unit in that force was alert and ready, prepared to receive the orders of the day and act upon them with unparalleled celerity and absence of fuss.