Bushmen, everyone says, have no hearts,—yet a spasm contracted the throat of this Bushman as he neared the spot where he had left the blind girl, which, in the case of a civilised man, would have been attributed to an agony of grief.
But no trace of Elsie could he see. His keen, microscopic eye searched the ground for a sign, but none was visible. The north-east wind had blown; the swift springing of vegetation had affected Nature’s obliterative work—wiping away the faint traces of the tragedy from this small theatre as completely as Time, with the assistance of lichens, grass and a few others of Nature’s busy legion, will finally obliterate man with all his works and pomps.
No sign.—Stay,—there, floating on the slow, sweet stream of sun-buoyant air, quivered a yellow thread,—bright as materialised sunlight. It hung from the bough of a shrub upon which bright, sweet-scented buds were struggling through between cruel-looking, black thorns, and miraculously getting the best of the struggle. Kanu carefully disentangled the precious filament, rolled it up into a minute coil and put it into a little bag containing several namelessly-unpleasant charms, which hung by a strand of twisted sinew from his neck.
Swiftly the Bushman examined every nook and cranny in the vicinity, but no other trace of the blind girl he had served so faithfully and unselfishly could be found. Then his eyes began to swim with what in the case of a European would certainly have been called tears, and his throat tightened once more with the same sensation he had a few minutes previously experienced.
Far away to the northward the great blue peaks of the Drakenstein glowed and pulsed in the sunshine, while their hollows were dyed a more wonderful purple than Tynan artificer ever took from the depths of the Mediterranean. Beyond this range, albeit on the other side of an almost interminable series of other ranges, seemingly as impassable, lay the desert; and towards this Kanu the Bushman sighed his savage soul.
One more look round—lest, haply he might have left some sign unread or some nook unsearched;—one more recurrence of the unaccountable (for a Bushman) sensation in his throat, and Kanu set his face to the North, and went forth for ever from the shadow of the dwelling-places of civilised men.