Did Suzanne save the boy for them?
Did we rear him for them, although he was English?
Think how you will feel when he has crossed the ridge yonder for the last time, you who are sonless, and you must go about your tasks alone, must ride alone and hunt alone, and, if need be, fight alone, except for his memory.

Think, Jan, think." "Do not tempt me, woman," he whispered back in a hoarse voice, for Ralph and he were more to each other than any father and son that I have known, since they were also the dearest of friends.

"Do not tempt me," he went on; "the lad must himself be told of this, and he must judge; he is young, but among us at nineteen a youth is a burgher grown, with a right to take up land and marry.

He must be told, I say, and at once." "It is good," I said, "let him judge;" but in the wickedness of my heart I made up my mind that I would find means to help his judgment, for the thought of losing him filled me with blind terror, and all that night I lay awake thinking out the matter.
Early in the morning I rose and went to the _stoep_, where I found Suzanne drinking coffee and singing a little song that Ralph had taught her.

I can see her now as she stood in her pretty tight-fitting dress, a flower wet with dew in her girdle, swinging her _kapje_ by its strings while the first rays of the sun glistened on the waves of her brown and silk-like hair.