CHAPTER V.THE SHOOTING MATCH.
My journey back to the Mission Station was a strange contrast to that which I had made thence a few days before.

Then, the darkness, the swift mare beneath me rushing through it like a bird, the awful terror in my heart lest I should be too late, as with wild eyes I watched the paling stars and the first gathering grey of dawn.

Now, the creaking of the ox-cart, the familiar veld, the bright glow of the peaceful sunlight, and in my heart a great thankfulness, and yet a new terror lest the pure and holy love which I had won should be stolen away from me by force or fraud.
Well, as the one matter had been in the hand of God, so was the other, and with that knowledge I must be content.

The first trial had ended in death and victory.

How would the second end?
I wondered, and those words seemed to jumble themselves up in my mind and shape a sentence that it did not conceive.