The eventful day was drawing to a close, so preparations for the return homeward were at once made. Mr Brand started on foot for Cape Town, by a short cut. He meant to call upon the magistrate at once and obtain a written permission to visit Robben Island and see the prisoner on the following day.
As the party drove homeward Elsie was wrapped in a trance of utter happiness. The lovely day had ripened into a sunset-flower of gorgeous and surpassing richness, and, as the pony drew the little carriage up the hill-side to the peaceful home among the trees, its rarest light seemed to be intensified in and reflected from the radiant face of the blind girl.
Elsie spoke no more that night, and the others made no attempt to disturb her blissful silence. In the middle of the night Mrs du Plessis arose, lit a candle and stepped softly to the room where the blind girl slept alone. She was dreaming, and her lips were parted in a smile. Her long, brown lashes lay darkly fringed upon her cheeks, her face and throat had lost their marble pallor and were faintly tinged with the most delicate rose. Adown her sides and completely concealing her arms flowed the double cataract of her peerless hair. Across her bosom and concealing her clasped hands, the streams coalesced into a golden billow which, as it heaved to her breath showed full of changing lights.
The kind woman gazed, spell-bound, until happy tears came and blurred her vision. Then, with thanks to the Power which had sent this angel to her household upon her lips, she noiselessly withdrew.
Chapter Thirteen.
Father and Daughter.
Stephanus Van Der Walt had entered the door of his prison with the firm conviction that his God—the just and mighty God of the Psalms that he knew so well—had laid this burthen upon him for his great transgressions. In the light of his changed heart all the provocation which Gideon had given him seemed to melt away like snowflakes in the sunshine, whilst his own contributions to the long-drawn-out quarrel waxed larger and blacker the more he looked at them.
The exaltation of spirit which buoyed him up when he received his sentence had never flagged. He gloried in his sufferings. His only prayer was that God might not visit his crimes upon his innocent children,—that Elsie, his little blind child, might have the shield of divine protection extended over her helplessness—that Marta, the wife whom he had neglected, and Sara, his elder daughter who stood on the threshold of womanhood, might find the wind of adversity tempered to their need.