He

Then the third time he bowed himself. When at last he looked up, some ants had come to the meat on the altar. stood up, and drove them away. Then he put his hat on his hot curls, and sat in the shade. He clasped his hands about his knees. He sat to watch what would come to pass. The glory of the Lord God Almighty! He knew he should see it.

"My dear God is trying me," he said; and he sat there through the fierce heat of the afternoon. Still he watched and waited when the sun began to slope; and when it neared the horizon and the sheep began to cast long shadows across the karroo, he still sat there. He hoped when the first rays touched the hills, till the sun dipped behind them and was gone. Then he called his ewes together, and broke down the altar, and threw the meat far, far away into the field.

He walked home behind his flock. His heart was heavy. He reasoned so: "God cannot lie. I had faith. No fire came. I am like Cain, I am not his. He will not hear my prayer. God hates me."

The boy's heart was heavy. When he reached the kraal gate the two girls met him.

"Come," said the yellow-haired Em, "let us play 'coop.' There is still time before it gets quite dark. You, Waldo, go and hide on the 'kopje'; Lyndall and I will shut eyes here, and we will not look."

The girls hid their faces in the stone wall of the sheep kraal, and the boy clambered half-way up the "kopje." He crouched down between two stones, and gave the call. Just then the milkherd came walking out of the cow kraal with two pails. He was an ill-looking Kaffir.

"Ah!" thought the boy, "perhaps he will die to-night, and go to hell! I must pray for him, I must pray!"

Then he thought, "Where am I going to?" and he prayed desperately.

"Ah! this is not right at all," little Em said, peeping between the stones, and finding him in a very curious posture. "What are you doing, Waldo? It is not the play, you know. You should run out when we come to the white stone. Ah, you do not play nicely."

"I-I will play nicely now," said the boy, coming out and standing sheepishly before them; "I-I only forgot; I will play now."

"He has been to sleep," said freckled Em.

"No," said beautiful little Lyndall, looking curiously at him: "he has been crying."

She never made a mistake.

THE CONFESSION

ONE night, two years after, the boy sat alone on the "kopje." He had crept softly from his father's room, and come there. He often did, because when he prayed or cried aloud his father might awake and hear him; and none knew his great sorrow, and none knew his grief but he himself, and he buried them deep in his heart.

He turned up the brim of his great hat, and looked at the moon, but most at the leaves of the prickly pear that grew just before him. They glinted, and glinted, and glinted, just like his own heart,-cold, so hard, and very wicked. His physical heart had pain also; it seemed full of little bits of glass that hurt. He had sat there for half an hour, and he dared not go back to the close house.

He felt horribly lonely. There was not one thing so wicked as he in all the world, and he knew it. He folded his arms and began to cry-not aloud: he sobbed without making any sound, and his tears left scorched marks where they fell. He could not pray: he had prayed night and day for so many months; and to-night he could not pray. When he left off crying, he held his aching head with his brown hands. If one might have gone up to him and touched him kindly-poor ugly little thing! Perhaps his heart was almost broken.

With his swollen eyes he sat there on a flat stone at the very top of the "kopje "; and the tree, with every one of its wicked leaves, blinked, and blinked, and blinked at him. Presently he began to cry again, and then stopped his crying to look at it. He was quiet for a long while, then he knelt slowly and bent forward. There was a secret he had carried in his heart for a year. He had not dared to look at it; he had not whispered it to himself; but for a year he had carried it. "I hate God!" he said. The wind took the words and ran away with them, among the stones, and through the leaves of the prickly pear. He thought it died away half down the "kopje.” He had told it

now.

"I love Jesus Christ, but I hate God."

The wind carried away that sound as it had done the first. Then he got up, and buttoned his old coat about him. He knew he was certainly lost now; he did not care. If half the world were to be lost, why not he too? He would not pray for mercy any more. Better so better to know certainly. It was ended now. Better so.

He began scrambling down the sides of the "kopje" to go home.

Better so, but oh, the loneliness, the agonized pain, for that night, and for nights on nights to come! The anguish that sleeps all day on the heart like a heavy worm, and wakes up at night to feed!

There are some of us who in after years say to Fate, "Now deal us your hardest blow, give us what you will; but let us never again suffer as we suffered when we were children."

The barb in the arrow of childhood's suffering is this: its intense loneliness, its intense ignorance.

THREE DREAMS IN A DESERT

From 'Dreams'

s I traveled across an African plain the sun shone down hotly. Then I drew my horse up under a mimosa-tree, and I took the saddle from him and left him to feed among the parched bushes. And all to right and to left stretched the brown earth. And I sat down under the tree, because the heat beat fiercely, and all along the horizon the air throbbed. And after a while a heavy drowsiness came over me, and I laid my head down against my saddle, and I fell asleep there. And in my sleep I had a curious dream.

I thought I stood on the border of a great desert, and the sand blew about everywhere. And I thought I saw two great figures like beasts of burden of the desert; and one lay upon the sand with its neck stretched out, and one stood by it. And I looked curiously at the one that lay upon the ground; for it had a great burden on its back, and the sand was thick about it, so that it seemed to have piled over it for centuries.

And I looked very curiously at it. And there stood one beside me watching. And I said to him, "What is this huge creature who lies here on the sand?"

And he said, "This is woman; she that bears men in her body."

And I said, "Why does she lie here motionless with the sand piled round her?"

And he answered, "Listen, I will tell you! Ages and ages long she has lain here, and the wind has blown over her. The oldest, oldest, oldest man living has never seen her move; the oldest, oldest book records that she lay here then, as she lies here now, with the sand about her. But listen! Older than the oldest book, older than the oldest recorded memory of man, on the Rocks of Language, on the hard-baked clay of Ancient Customs, now crumbling to decay, are found the marks of her footsteps! Side by side with his who stands beside her you may trace them; and you know that she who now lies there, once wandered free over the rocks with him."

And I said, "Why does she lie there now?"

And he said, "I take it, ages ago the Age-of-dominion-ofmuscular-force found her; and when she stooped low to give suck to her young, and her back was broad, he put his burden of subjection on to it, and tied it on with the broad band of Inevitable Necessity. Then she looked at the earth and the sky, and knew there was no hope for her; and she lay down on the sand with the burden she could not loosen. Ever since she has lain here. And the ages have come, and the ages have gone, but the band of Inevitable Necessity has not been cut."

And I looked and saw in her eyes the terrible patience of the centuries; the ground was wet with her tears, and her nostrils blew up the sand.

And I said, "Has she ever tried to move ? » And he said, "Sometimes a limb has quivered. wise: she knows she cannot rise with the burden on her."

But she is

And I said, "Why does not he who stands by her leave her and go on?"

And he said, "He cannot. Look->

And I saw a broad band passing along the ground from one to the other, and it bound them together.

He said, "While she lies there, he must stand and look across the desert."

And I said, "Does he know why he cannot move?"

And he said, "No."

And I heard a sound of something cracking, and I looked, and I saw the band that bound the burden on to her back broken asunder; and the burden rolled on the ground.

And I said, "What is this?"

And he said, "The Age-of-muscular-force is dead. The Ageof-nervous-force has killed him with the knife he holds in his hand; and silently and invisibly he has crept up to the woman, and with that knife of Mechanical Invention he has cut the band that bound the burden to her back. The Inevitable Necessity is broken. She might rise now."

And I saw that she still lay motionless on the sand, with her eyes open and her neck stretched out. And she seemed to look for something on the far-off border of the desert that never came. And I wondered if she were awake or asleep. And as I looked her body quivered, and a light came into her eyes like when a sunbeam breaks into a dark room.

I said, "What is it?"

He whispered, "Hush! the thought has come to her, 'Might I not rise ?>»

And I looked. And she raised her head from the sand, and I saw the dent where her neck had lain so long. And she looked at the earth, and she looked at the sky, and she looked at him who stood by her; but he looked out across the desert.

And I saw her body quiver; and she pressed her front knees to the earth, and veins stood out: and I cried, "She is going to rise!"

But only her sides heaved, and she lay still where she was. But her head she held up; she did not lay it down again. And he beside me said, "She is very weak. See, her legs have been crushed under her so long."

And I saw the creature struggle; and the drops stood out on her.

And I said, "Surely he who stands beside her will help her?» And he beside me answered, "He cannot help her: she must help herself. Let her struggle till she is strong."

And I cried, "At least he will not hinder her! See, he moves farther from her, and tightens the cord between them, and he drags her down."