.

THE INNOCENT BLOOD.
After I had been taken away it seems that the court summoned Hernan Pereira and Henri Marais to accompany them to a lonely spot at a distance, where they thought that their deliberations would not be overheard.

In this, however, they were mistaken, having forgotten the fox-like cunning of the Hottentot, Hans.

Hans had heard me sentenced, and probably enough feared that he who also had committed the crime of escaping from Dingaan, might be called on to share that sentence.

Also he wished to know the secret counsel of these Boers, whose language, of course, he understood as well as he did his own.
So making a circuit up the hillside, he crept towards them on his belly as a snake creeps, wriggling in and out between the tufts of last year's dead grass, which grew here in plenty, without so much as moving their tops.