"I suppose he was speaking
of somebody else, as he could not remember whether the name was Dove or
Cove, or perhaps he was just lying. At any rate, I did not believe, him. I
always felt that you were alive."
"Why did you not come to see, Richard?"
"Why? Because it was impossible. For years my father was an invalid,
paralysed; and I was his only child, and could not leave him."
She looked a question at him.
"Yes," he answered with a nod, "dead, ten months ago, and for a few weeks
I had to remain to arrange about the property, of which he left a good
deal, for we did well of late years. Just then I heard a rumour of an
English missionary and his wife and daughter who were said to be living
somewhere beyond the boundaries of Natal, in a savage place on the
Transvaal side of the Drakensberg, and as some Boers I knew were trekking
into that country I came with them on the chance--a pretty poor one, as
the story was vague enough."
"You came--you came to seek the girl, Rachel Dove?"
"Of course. Otherwise why should I have left my farms down in the Cape to
risk my neck among these savages?"
"And then," went on Rachel, "you or somebody else sent in the spy, Quabi,
who returned to the Boer camp with his story about the Inkosazana-y-Zoola.
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