You laughed at me for my keenness, Davie, but I've seen it justified.

I was never a man of war like you, and so I had to bide at home while you and your like were straightening out the troubles.
But when it was all over my job began, for I could do what you couldn't do--I was the physician to heal wounds.

You mind how nervous I was when I heard the drums beat.

I hear them every evening now, for we have made a rule that all the Kaffir farms on the Berg sound a kind of curfew.

It reminds me of old times, and tells me that though it is peace nowadays we mean to keep all the manhood in them that they used to exercise in war.