The German reflected. Kaffer women were accustomed to sleep in the open air; but then, the child was small, and after so hot a day the night might be chilly. That she would creep back to the huts at the homestead when the darkness favoured her, the German’s sagacity did not make evident to him. He took off the old brown salt-and-pepper coat, and held it out to her. The woman received it in silence, and laid it across her knee. “With that they will sleep warmly; not so bad. Ha, ha!” said the German. And he rode home, nodding his head in a manner that would have made any other man dizzy.
“I wish he would not come back tonight,” said Em, her face wet with tears.
“It will be just the same if he comes back tomorrow,” said Lyndall.
The two girls sat on the step of the cabin weeping for the German’s return. Lyndall shaded her eyes with her hand from the sunset light.
“There he comes,” she said, “whistling ‘Ach Jerusalem du schone’ so loud I can hear him from here.”
“Perhaps he has found the sheep.”
“Found them!” said Lyndall. “He would whistle just so if he knew he had to die tonight.”
“You look at the sunset, eh, chickens?” the German said, as he came up at a smart canter. “Ah, yes, that is beautiful!” he added, as he dismounted, pausing for a moment with his hand on the saddle to look at the evening sky, where the sun shot up long flaming streaks, between which and the eye thin yellow clouds floated. “Ei! you weep?” said the German, as the girls ran up to him.
Before they had time to reply the voice of Tant Sannie was heard.
“You child, of the child, of the child of a Kaffer’s dog, come here!”