So when _Oom_ Jacob came back the next year all the oxen were gone.
He was very angry with my father, and beat him with a yoke-strap till he was all blood, and though we showed him the bones of the oxen, he said that we had stolen them and sold them.
"Now _Oom_ Jacob had a beautiful span of black oxen that he loved like children.

Sixteen of them there were, and they would come up to the yoke when he called them and put down their heads of themselves.

They were tame as dogs.

These oxen were thin when they came down, but in two months they grew fat and began to want to trek about as oxen do.

At this time there was a Basutu, one of Sequati's people, resting in our hut, for he had hurt his foot with a thorn.