"So," he said, "twenty years last winter.

Baas Frank was young then, he had only a little down upon his chin.

One year when _Oom_ Jacob went away, after the first rains, he left six oxen that were too _poor_ (thin) to go, with my father, and told him to look after them as though they were his children.

But the oxen were bewitched.

Three of them took the lung-sick and died, a lion got one, a snake got one, and one ate 'tulip' and died too.