“Good evenin’, Missie Lilian. Master said I was give you dis,” exclaimed Sam, placing the note in her hand. It was a hastily-pencilled scrap—only a few words, but words expressing such a wealth of undying love, ever and in spite of anything which had occurred or which might occur, that she retired into the room, and, sinking into a chair, pressed the bit of crumpled paper to her lips, and her tears fell like rain upon it.
“Oh, Arthur, my own darling love! you do not think the worse of me! Ah, I can bear anything now?” she murmured.
Could she? Nevertheless, it was well that the merciful veil of distance was drawn between her eyes and the tragedy which at that very moment was being enacted on the brow of a certain cliff, that calm, fair, cloudless evening.
Meanwhile, Sam was busy putting up the horse. It had not needed the haggard features and harsh, strained tones to bring home to his quick perception the certainty that something had gone decidedly wrong with his beloved master, hence the more than ordinary display of loyalty he had exhibited when they parted; and now, with the ready tact of his race, he turned away directly he had delivered the note to Lilian, awaiting her own time to call him and question him about its writer. So, with his jacket off, and armed with a curry-comb and brush, Sam was making great play upon the matted and soiled coat of the tired horse when a sweet voice from the back-door called his name.
“Coming, Missie Lilian—coming,” cried the faithful fellow, as he flung down his stable implements and hurried across the intervening bit of garden, shuffling on his jacket as he went.
“Sam, you must be very hot and tired after your journey. Drink this, and then I want to talk to you.”
“This” being a large tumbler of cool, sparkling lemonade, which she held in her hand. Sam took it with a grateful, pleasing ejaculation of thanks. A dusky savage, born in a remote kraal beneath the towering cones of the Kwahlamba range, he appreciated her thoughtful kindness far more than many a white “Christian” would have done—the action more than the result.
“Dat good,” he said, after a long pull at the refreshing liquid, “but not so good as see Missie Lilian again.”
She smiled at the genuine though inaccurately-worded compliment, and began questioning him, a little shyly at first, but soon so fast that she found herself asking the same questions over again, and hardly giving time for answers. Sam, who, like all natives, dearly loved to hear himself talk, once on the congenial topic of his master and the war, lectured away ad libitum.
“Missie Lilian—master he say, I stop here till he come back. I do everyting you tell me. If you want tell master anyting, you send Sam, straight—so!” and, extending his arm, he cracked his fingers in the direction of Kafirland with an expressive gesture. “Sam he go in no time. Dat what Inkos say.”