The man fell and lay for a moment groaning; then he crept from the hut on his hands and knees.
Muller sat scowling from under his bent brows, and watched him go.

When he was gone, he rose and fastened the door behind him, then suddenly he burst into tears, the result, no doubt, of the mingled effects of drink, mental and physical exhaustion, and the never-resting passion--one can scarcely call it love--which ate at his heart, like the worm that dieth not.
"Oh, Bessie, Bessie!" he groaned, "I have done it all for you.

Surely you cannot be angry when I have killed them all for you?
Oh, my darling, my darling! If you only knew how I love you! Oh, my darling, my darling!" and in an agony of passion he flung himself on to the rough pallet in the corner of the hut and sobbed himself to sleep.
It would seem that Frank Muller's evil-doing did not make him happy, the truth being that to enjoy wickedness a man must be not only without conscience, but also without passion.

Now Frank Muller was tormented with a very effective substitute for the first--superstition, and by the latter his life was overshadowed, since the beauty of a girl possessed the power to dominate his wildest moods and to inflict upon him torments that she herself was incapable even of imagining.
At the first light of dawn Hendrik crept humbly into the hut to wake his master, and within half an hour they were across the Vaal and on the road to Wakkerstroom.
As the light increased so did Muller's spirits rise, till at last, when the red sun came up in glory and swept away the shadows, he felt as though all the load of guilt and fear that lay upon his heart had departed with them.

He could see now that the death of the two Boers by lightning was a mere accident--a happy accident, indeed; for, had it not so chanced, he would have been forced to kill them himself, if he could not have obtained possession of the warrant by other means.