"Then everything was in the fire. The two men fought in the room like beasts, oversetting table and lamp, and stamping into the fire on the hearth. Barend was mad with a passion of long nursing, and hewed with his great fists till the old man fell heavily to the ground, and lay moaning.
"Barend stood over him, glowering. 'Swine!' he said to his father; 'swine and brute! get you out of this house to the veld. You are no father of mine.'
"But the old man was much hurt, and lay where he had fallen, groaning as though he had not heard.
"'I will have you out of this,' said the son. 'If you are come to die, die on the road. I had wished you dead for years.'
"So he wound his hand, with the knuckles all over blood, in the old man's white hair, and threw open the door with his other hand.
"'Out with you!' he shouted, and dragged him down the step and into the yard. Yes, he dragged him across the yard to the gate; and when he unfastened the gate the old man opened his eyes and spoke.
"'Leave me here,' he said, speaking slowly and painfully.
'Leave me here, my son. Thus far I dragged my father.'"
The Vrouw Grobelaar, to point a weighty moral, turned her face upon Katje. But that young lady was sleeping soundly with her mouth open.
THE DREAM-FACE
"I wish," said Katje, looking up from her book—"I wish a man would come and make me marry him."