HANS COETZEE COMES TO PRETORIA Once he had turned the corner, John's recovery was rapid.

Naturally of a vigorous constitution, when the artery had reunited, he soon made up for the great loss of blood which he had undergone, and in a little more than a month from the date of his wound physically, was almost as good a man as ever.
One morning--it was the 20th of March--Jess and he were sitting in "The Palatial" garden.

John was lying in a lone cane deck chair that Jess had borrowed or stolen out of one of the deserted houses, and smoking a pipe.

By his side, in a hole in the flat arm of the chair, fashioned originally to receive a soda-water tumbler, was a great bunch of purple grapes which she had gathered for him; and on his knees lay a copy of that journalistic curiosity, the "News of the Camp," which was chiefly remarkable for its utter dearth of news.

It was not easy to run a journal in a beleaguered town.
They sat in silence: John puffing away at his pipe, and Jess, her work--one of his socks--lying idly upon her knees, her hands clasped over it, and her eyes fixed upon the lights and shadows that played with broad fingers upon the wooded slopes beyond.
So silently did they sit that a great green lizard came and basked himself in the sun within a yard of them, and a beautiful striped butterfly perched deliberately upon the purple grapes! It was a delightful day and a delightful spot.