Softly the room door opened. In a twinkling Petrus' arms were flung around the old man's neck.
"A penny for your thoughts, Grandfather dear! Please let me stay here with you a while," begged the boy.
"Ah, Koos, is it you, my boy? Yes, yes, you may stay a while if you do not ask too many questions. It is easy to guess your thoughts. Let me try. Your visit with Aunt Kotie at Johannesburg next week. Your trip to Cape Town with Lieutenant Wortley and George. Hurrying back home in time for Christmas. Isn't that right, Koos?"
"Yes, Grandfather, and George is expecting a big Christmas box from his Aunt Edith in England. Now for yours!"
"I should have to take you back to the early days in the Old Colony, Koos, when I was but a boy like yourself. And, like you, I used to beg my old grandfather for 'stories' of his country, which was France. He was one of several hundred French Huguenots who fled from their own country to South Africa, because they could not worship as they liked. Those were happy days in the Old Colony there on our large, quiet farms, before British rule became intolerable. Our people were prosperous slave-holders. My father owned as many as eighty Hottentots. But as British oppression became more and more intolerable—our slaves liberated, and indignities of every kind heaped upon us—our Boer leaders resolved to endure no more and the great 'Exodus'—known in history as the 'Great Trek of 1836'—began. I shall never forget those awful days. I was just a boy then."
"Why didn't the Boers rebel?" indignantly questioned Petrus.
"Rebellion was useless. But we knew of a vast land that stretched away to the north of us. To be sure, it was filled with savages and ferocious wild animals, but even that was preferable to British tyranny. There were about six thousand of us in all who left our fertile coastland farms and trekked forth into the unknown wilderness in search of new homes where we could live in peace. One by one, we loaded up our huge ox-drawn wagons, which were to serve as home, fort and wagon for many a long day on our journey. Inside these great covered wagons—'rolling-houses'—the Zulus called them—the women and children were seated. Outside—tramping alongside as a guard—carrying their well-oiled, long-barreled guns—were the men. The older children helped to drive and round up the great flocks and herds which accompanied our migration. Well do I remember the cries of a small, bare-foot boy of ten, running at the head of a long team of tired oxen, which now and then quickened its pace at the touch of his sjambok. Who do you suppose that bit of a boy was, Koos?"
"You, Grandfather?"
"No, no, Koos. That little fellow was only about half my size then, but, since those hard days, he has four times ruled our glorious Transvaal as its President, and often fought with us all for our country's freedom."
"Oh, I know! President Kruger?"