“Yah, yah—sure, sure,” answered the native, with a rude laugh. “There are not many such white girls in the Transvaal. I have made no mistake. I have ‘smelt you out.’” And he began to go through his catalogue—“Yellow hair that curls,” &c.—again.
Then Bessie opened the letter. Inside was an ordinary sheet of paper written over in a bold, firm, yet slightly unpractised writing that she knew well enough, and the sight of which filled her with a presentiment of evil. It was Frank Muller’s.
She turned sick and cold, but could not choose but read as follows:
“Camp, near Pretoria. 15 February.
“Dear Miss Bessie,—I am sorry to have to write to you, but though we have quarrelled lately, and also your good uncle, I think it my duty to do so, and send this to your hand by a special runner. Yesterday was a sortie made by the poor folk in Pretoria, who are now as thin with hunger as the high veldt oxen just before spring. Our arms were again victorious; the redcoats ran away and left their ambulance in our hands, carrying with them many dead and wounded. Among the dead was the Captain Niel——”
Here Bessie uttered a sort of choking cry, and let the letter fall over the verandah, to one of the posts of which she clung with both her hands.
The ill-favoured native below grinned, and, picking the paper up, handed it to her.
She took it, feeling that she must know all, and read on like one reads in some ghastly dream:
“who has been staying on your uncle’s farm. I did not see him killed myself, but Jan Vanzyl shot him, and Roi Dirk Oosthuizen, and Carolus, a Hottentot, saw them pick him up and carry him away. They say that he was quite dead. For this I fear you will be sorry, as I am, but it is the chance of war, and he died fighting bravely. Make my obedient compliments to your uncle. We parted in anger, but I hope in the new circumstances that have arisen in the land to show him that I, for one, bear no anger.—Believe me, dear Miss Bessie, your humble and devoted servant,
“Frank Muller.”