“A good way to comfort one,” he growled ungraciously, “to wander away with a Bushman and make us run all over the country looking for you.”
“Would you like to know, truly, why I went, Uncle Gideon?”
“Oh, as you are back all right now and have had enough to eat, wherever you have been, it does not matter; you can tell me some other time.—Only you must not do such a thing again.”
“No,—there will be no need for me to do the like again.”
Gideon left the room, feeling more and more puzzled. Each one of Elsie’s ambiguous remarks sent his speculations farther and farther afield. One thing only was clear to him,—it was time to carry out that intention which had been gradually growing of late years as time went by and his brother did not, as the miserable man had confidently expected, die in prison. This was the intention, previously unformulated, of finally leaving wife, home and everything else and trekking to some unknown spot far beyond the great, mysterious Gariep,—to some spot so distant that his brother’s vengeance would not be able to reach him, and there spending the remnant of his miserable days.
To do Gideon but justice, the strongest element in his dread of meeting Stephanus was not physical but moral. He felt he could not bear to confront the stern accusation which he pictured as arising in the injured man’s piercing eyes. He feared death, for he dared not meet his God with this unrepented crime on his soul, but he feared it less than the eyes of his injured brother,—that brother whom he had robbed of ten precious years of life.