Part 5 (2/2)

Search was made, but no trace of the missing ones could be found. Word was pa.s.sed on from farm to farm,--from one lonely squatter's camp to another, until the whole country side for hundreds of miles was on the alert. The mountain haunts of the Bushmen were ransacked--with the usual accompaniment of slaughter and pillage,--the secret places of the desert were searched,--but without success. Had Kanu been found he would have been shot at sight--so great was the indignation against him.

Poor Kanu was tried, found guilty, and sentenced for the crime of kidnapping; fortunately, the defendant made default.

Thus another fold of shadow was added to the gloom which wrapped the stricken household. Gideon, whose mind was ever on the alert upon the devious planes of thought, speculated upon the mystery through the preconception that it contained some element which had been lost sight of. Knowing Kanu as he did he could not conceive that the Bushman would have harmed Elsie. An idea took root in his brain which bore a sudden fruit of deadly fear. Setting spurs to his horse he left the search-party on the hill-side and galloped down to the spring at the margin of which he had made his wild confession. Under a thick curtain of shrub a few yards from where he had knelt he found the undergrowth crushed down as though someone had recently sat upon it, and, close by, where a mole had thrown up a heap of loose earth, was the print of a small foot, freshly indented. The discovery turned him sick with horror.

In a few minutes, however, he laughed at his ridiculous fears.

Nevertheless, a speculation which, he persuaded himself over and over again was quite preposterous, kept persistently coming back and grinning at him,--even after it had been driven away over and over again with contumely, by his better understanding.

The days came and went with dreary monotony. One by one the search-parties returned from their fruitless seekings. After hurried preparations Gideon again set face towards the burning northern deserts, and resumed his vain quest for the habitation of Peace.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

ELSIE'S QUEST.

The excitement consequent upon the battle of Blauwberg and the conquest of the Cape by England had just died down, and the inhabitants of Cape Town were involuntarily coming to the conclusion that the English were not such stern tyrants as they had been led to expect.

Juffrouw du Plessis and her two daughters were sitting in their garden behind the oleander hedge, through an opening in which they could look out over the lovely expanse of Table Bay. The cottage, embowered in oak trees and with the north front covered by the soft green foliage of an immense vine, was built upon one of the terraces which lead up to the foot of Table Mountain, and which have, long since, been absorbed by the expanding city.

Behind the cottage the frowning crags of the ma.s.sive mountain had hidden their rigour beneath the ”Table Cloth” of snowy cloud, whose tossing, ever-changing folds and fringes were flung like foam into the blue vault of the sky by the boisterous ”South-Easter” which had given it birth.

But in spite of the turmoil overhead, no breath of rude air disturbed the halcyon quiet which seemed to have spread a wing of wards.h.i.+p over the dwelling.

An old slave who, notwithstanding his wrinkled skin and frosted hair, was still of powerful frame, was working with great deliberation among the flowers,--where large cabbage-roses lifted their heads high over violet-bordered beds that were sweet with mignonette and gay with pinks.

The Juffrouw was of Huguenot descent and showed her French origin in the alertness of her movements and the sensibility of her features. She was the wife of a merchant who carried on a flouris.h.i.+ng business in the city.

”Mother,” suddenly said Helena, the younger girl, ”while you were out this morning I met a blind girl with the longest and yellowest hair I have ever seen.”

”A blind girl.--Where was she?”

”On the footpath behind the house.”

”And where did she come from?”

”I do not know; she would not tell me. I think she must be mad, for she said she was going to talk to the Governor and she asked me where he lived.”

”What an extraordinary thing.”

”Yes. She was walking with a little Hottentot man, who was leading her by means of a stick. She said they were both very hungry, so I gave them some bread and milk. I left them sitting at the side of the path, eating, and when I went back to look for them they were gone.”

Elsie and Kanu sat at the side of a stream in a deep ravine in the western face of the Drakenstein Mountain range. Around them was a ma.s.s of dense scrub which was gay with lovely flowers. The child drooped wearily as she sat with her swollen feet in the cool, limpid water. Her cheeks were faintly flushed, her lips parted, and her eyes shone with strange brilliancy. It was the morning of the sixth day after they had stolen away from Elandsfontein. Kanu looked gaunt with hunger. Famine seemed to glare out of his hollow eyes. In spite of the proverbial toughness of the Bushman, he was almost in the last stage of exhaustion.

A belt made of twisted bark was tightly bound around his waist, and a bundle of gra.s.s and moss, rolled into a ball, was forced between it and his body, over the abdomen.

”Kanu,--how much farther do you think Cape Town is?” asked Elsie in a tired voice.

”I have heard the people say that the town lies under a big mountain with a flat top,” replied the Bushman,--”I can see such a mountain far away across the sand-flats. We will reach it to-morrow night if your feet do not get too sore.”

The child drew up her feet from out of the water and pa.s.sed her fingers gently over them. Even this slight touch made her wince. She threw back her head with a movement of impatience. Her eyes were swimming in tears. Beside her, on the gra.s.s, lay a pair of tattered _veldschoens_.

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