Again there was no reason why he should hide himself in this fashion, except that it pleased him to do so.
Presently the big horse approached, and the snakelike Hottentot raised his head ever so little and peered out with his beady black eyes through the straw-like grass stems.

They fell on Muller's cold face.

It was evident that he was in a reflective mood--in an angrily reflective mood.
So absorbed was he that he nearly let his horse, which was also absorbed by the near prospect of a comfortable stall, put his foot in a big hole that a wandering antbear had amused himself on the previous night by digging exactly in the centre of the road.
"What is Baas Frank thinking of, I wonder ?" said Jantje to himself as horse and man passed within four feet of him.

Then rising, he crossed the road, and slipping round by a back way like a fox from a covert, was standing at the stable-door with a vacant and utterly unobservant expression of face some seconds before the black horse and its rider had reached the house.
"I will give them one more chance, just one more," thought the handsome Boer, or rather half-breed--for it will be remembered that his mother was English--"and if they won't take it, then let their fate be upon their own heads.

To-morrow I go to the _bymakaar_ at Paarde Kraal to take counsel with Paul Kruger and Pretorius, and the other 'fathers of the land,' as they call themselves.