XVI.

_THE SCHOOLMASTER'S GRATITUDE._

"I HAVE a note for you, Algarkirke," said Mr. Treby, when he had seen all his guests comfortably established—biped and quadruped alike enjoying the "good feed" he had provided in his hearty English hospitality.

The schoolmaster was in such constant request as interpreter that it was some minutes before he had a chance to open his letter. As it bore no post-mark, he concluded it must have come from some one in the neighbourhood. Possibly it held the promise of a future scholar; so he put it in his pocket to await some more convenient opportunity.

"It is from England," added Mr. Treby, in a low aside.

Algarkirke grew strangely pale, and crushed it out of sight. "Not a word before these Boers; remember your promise," he whispered, turning away from Mr. Treby to join in Walt Immerseel's boisterous mirth.

Mr. Treby carved his venison in thoughtful silence, whilst the whole family of the Immerseels did ample justice to his English fare.

When knives and forks were at last allowed to rest, and the great basket of fruit which Tante Milligen had brought with her was placed upon the table, Mr. Treby looked round for Jack.

He was expostulating with Zyl, who had taken the very best of the peaches on to his own plate, and then refused to taste them.

Jack was calling upon Mr. Algarkirke to find the reason why.

"Why?" repeated the schoolmaster laughing. "Because he means to plant them himself in your garden after dinner."

"Jack," said Mr. Treby, "come here, my boy, and tell your kind Dutch friends how sorry you are to have given them so much anxiety and trouble; and thank them as you ought for all they did to find you."

"Father, won't you speak for me? You'll make them understand ever so much better than I can," answered Jack coaxingly.

"No, no," returned Mr. Treby. "Just tell them how you lost yourself, and why you went away, that they may feel you are not the ungrateful boy you seemed."

"Please, Mr. Algarkirke," asked Jack, "will you tell it in Dutch after me?"

Glad of any diversion from the painful surprise Mr. Treby's words had awakened, and afraid of betraying his real feelings, Algarkirke assented readily.

Zyl, with his elbows on the table, greedily devoured every word with open mouth, as Jack recounted his adventures with Vickel in the sandy waste.

Jack did not like to tell tales of Otto to the Boer. He only said he wanted to post a letter to his grandfather.

Here Mr. Treby interposed with, "You need not mind speaking about Otto, for he has left Jaarsveldt for good."

The "oom" gave a low assenting grunt of satisfaction; and Jack went back in his story to describe the finding of the bank-note.

Up sprang Algarkirke, and seizing Jack by the collar, he thundered out, "That coat was mine, and anything found in it should have been given to me. How dare you send it away, you wretched little rascal! I'll never forgive you, never!"

Jack was startled by the fury of Algarkirke's tones.

Walt sprang to his feet, and Zyl doubled his fists, ready to punch the schoolmaster's head.

But Jack answered toughly,—

"Mr. Algarkirke, you quite forget I did not know where you were, and the bank-note was not yours; so I sent it to grandfather to give it back to the lady it really belonged to, and he has done it. You can read his letter if you like."

"I rather think you had better before you thrash my Jack," observed Mr. Treby dryly.

Jack pulled the letter out of his pocket and offered it to Algarkirke. Zyl and his big brother eyed him whilst he read, like two young bull-dogs preparing for a spring; but their indignation was somewhat appeased when Algarkirke flung down the paper and grasped Jack's hand.

"Am I dreaming?" he demanded. "By what magic have you done all this? Can it be true?"

"Why don't you read your own letter, Mr. Algarkirke?" retorted Jack. "It came in grandfather's, as he says."

The bewildered schoolmaster obeyed.

His note was brief:—

"DEAR SANDFORD,—Come back. The mystery is explained. Letters from Nottingham and remittances will await you at Pretoria. Return to us, and the past will be made up to you. I dare not write more plainly, not knowing whether this will ever reach you. But I snatch at the chance, for the man who bought my old coat of you may be able to find you out.—Your miserable friend, HORACE BOURKE."

"Farewell to Africa, and hurrah for merry England!" shouted Algarkirke, tossing the letter to the ceiling and catching it again, whilst the stolid Dutch faces around him stared in blank amazement. "Jack, Jack! You've been my good genius in very truth. Come along with me and I'll take you to England and make a man of you, my boy," he ran on.

"I rather think he bids fair to develop into that already, without wanting help of yours," observed Mr. Treby. "But how about this coat I bought of you? It's yours, and it's not yours, and I am earnestly requested in my letter of this morning to send it back to England."

"Horace Bourke and I were school-fellows," began Algarkirke. "We met one day at a village cricket match near Hawkswood Hall. One of the boys got hurt. Horace took his bat. As he pulled off his coat, he threw it to me, saying, 'Take care of it for me, Sandford, for there is a note in the pocket for father.'

"While they were playing, a bull broke loose from a neighbouring farm, and rushed into the field, scattering the cricketers, who ran for their lives, I among the rest. Horace snatched up one of the stumps and tried to drive the beast away. He shouted to me to fetch his gun. 'And give the note for father to one of our people, so that he gets it in time,' he added.

"Off I ran towards the parsonage. Before I reached it a thunder-storm came on. I threw his coat over my shoulders to keep myself dry. I got the gun, but forgot all about the note. Alarmed for his young master's safety, the gardener went back with me.

"When we gained the field we found the bull had been shot by its owner. I could not see anything of Horace, so I gave the man the gun and told him I must borrow the coat to go home in, as it still continued to pour. Before I had a chance to return the coat, Horace wrote to ask which of his father's people had taken the note from me, as it had never reached him.

"I started up in a fright and felt in the pockets of the coat, but as there was nothing in them I thought I must have left the note with the woman who gave me the gun, but the scare with the bull had put it all out of my head. That was how I answered him. Then I went on a tour with an old chum to get rid of the bother. When it came out there was money in the note, and I was charged with stealing it, my mother was frightened out of her senses. She packed up my belongings, and Horace's coat with them; for he privately entreated her not to send it back, not to let any one know I had taken it home, as it would go against me. She charged me to prolong my tour, but not to send her any address. We only communicated under cover to my Dutch friends at Amsterdam, and that but rarely, so that I had begun to think I was expatriated for life. No one but my mother believed in my innocence, and she reproached me with having brought all this trouble on myself by my confounded carelessness."

The "oom" blew a great whiff of smoke from his long clay pipe, and gave a nod to his sons that said plainly, "Are you listening to that, boys? Take the lesson home."

Zyl flung a snort of contempt at his schoolmaster, and kicked his heels remorselessly against the legs of Mr. Treby's new chairs.

Algarkirke went on, impetuously. "But you, Jack, you are the best friend I ever had in all my life, for you have cleared me. When my mother knows what you have done, there will be nothing that is in her power that she would not do for you in return."

"Oh, nonsense, Mr. Algarkirke," interrupted Jack, mindful of his grandfather's words. "It was Vic found it, not I. I am only so glad to have been some good in the world already."

Genderen, who had been whispering with her mother, touched Algarkirke's arm. "Talk with us about that." She smiled significantly.

Mr. Treby glanced approvingly at his boy. "And even now," he thought, "Algarkirke does not realize what this has cost you. But he is a more wretched cad than I take him to be if I can't make him feel before we part the moral difference between a boy who asks himself, What ought I to do? What would be right? And then does the best he can, without a thought of the consequences, and a selfish fellow, who only wants to shirk all responsibility and back out of everything disagreeable. It may open his eyes and make a change in his own character, for after all it is character shapes our destiny, both here and hereafter."

Aloud he said: "Keep on with your story, Jack, while you have so good an interpreter as Mr. Algarkirke. The Van is growing impatient."

As Mr. Treby spoke, the worthy Boer was thundering on the table with his clenched fist to recall Jack's attention.

Jack did not want to say any more about himself. It seemed to him so like being his own trumpeter. He grew hot at the thought, but his father urged him on with—"Remember the poor Black Antelope. We may never have such another chance to reinstate her in her old master's good graces. You must plead for her, my boy. No one but you can do it half so well."

"Yes, father, I must, I ought, and I will," answered Jack, as Walt hoisted him on a chair, exclaiming, "Jah, Jah!" for he had guessed the purport of Mr. Treby's last aside.

Zyl muttered an emphatic "Go it," a new English phrase he had picked up in the last three days, when Sannie appeared in the doorway, tugging with all her might at the scanty skirt of the unlucky Kafir.

It must be admitted that Jack's first essay at "tailoring" had not produced a West End fit. The grotesqueness of her appearance threw Tante Milligen into a fit of laughter. It was a happy moment. The pardon was granted before the pleading was well begun. Mr. Treby's Kafir guide, who, under pretence of driving Vickel away from Sannie, continued to linger round the door, began to gesticulate violently.

"Inkoos, casa," he began, in the picturesque language of his tribe, "lift up the bruised rosebud these men have trampled in the dust, and give her to me. I've room in my kraal for just such a wife, and I've sheep and oxen to buy her with; and no man shall wrong her any more, for the spear that stands in the corner of my hut would be swift as the lightning to strike him, and the heart which beats in my bosom beats only for her."

There was a softer glow in the downcast eyes of the Kafir girl than Jack had ever seen there before as his father answered,—

"She is free to go or stay as she chooses; but if she goes with you, Madzook, it shall not be empty-handed. The brindled heifer, and the pail and the English churn which she so admires, are all her own. She will tell you how she watched over my boy, and she takes a father's blessing with her wherever she goes."

"She deserves all her happiness," said Algarkirke humbly; "but it is not so with me. I see by Jack's face, he is thinking of the night when he wanted me to speak up for her, and I would not, because I despised the low, black cattle, and hated myself to think a similar misfortune could overwhelm us both. I had no feeling for anybody but myself. I thought if I had tried to help her, I should only let loose my own shame. It was better to stand aloof. And now I could wish my whole life undone."

"Cheer up," said Mr. Treby kindly. "Remember what I said to you when first we met. If the old self is dead, you may climb to a higher and a happier life. You've had hard lines, my poor boy, and you never heard the still small voice that was whispering through it all, 'Come unto Me, and I will give you rest.' But we must not speak of a day until we see its close; for Christ is ever with us, sowing light in the darkness, drawing good from evil, changing the curse into a blessing in his own good time."

And so they parted.

Three days afterwards the Hottentot cart from Jaarsveldt appeared once more at Mr. Treby's gate. Mr. Treby recognized the mining yellow face of the Jaarsveldt cow-keeper.

"What's up?" he asked as Zyl and Genderen tumbled out of the lumbering vehicle with more than their usual awkwardness.

They did not perceive Mr. Treby, as they were intently looking after something behind the cart. Zyl held a rope in his hand, and as Mr. Treby drew nearer, he saw that he was leading a splendid male ostrich, with brilliant eyes and plumage of the purest white.

"Where is Jack?" they asked, as Seco hurried up to greet his countryman.

"They shall have it their own way," thought Mr. Treby. "I won't spoil the children's pleasure by interfering before I know what they are after." He stepped into the garden and sent Jack to meet his friends.

Seco stood by his countryman with his hands to his sides, laughing with all his might, whilst Genderen called up Vickel. She came slowly, with her head on one side, eying the new arrival, which Zyl still contrived to keep well in leash.

Mr. Treby paused with his hand on the garden gate, for Genderen's slow Dutch, filtered through Hottentot into Jack's English, was amusing in the extreme. "Enough to make a cat laugh," he said.

"What have you brought your Speriwig here for?" shouted Jack in great glee.

"Never you mind," retorted Zyl. "Algarkirke's gone for good, and we shall all be dunces, I suppose."

"He thought a great deal about Vickel," put in Genderen, with her fingers in her mouth, of course. "You know you told him all his good luck was owing to her. He said he should send her a silver collar from England. Nonsense, we told him, what would a bird care about that? Get her a nice mate, and she will be as happy as the day is long. So he made a deal with father when they squared all up. He said if he had money enough to take him to Pretoria that was all he wanted. He was in such a hurry to be gone, he left father to get in the money that was owing him for schooling at the off farms. And Vickel's to have Speriwig."

"Speriwig, will get his own living browsing on the veldt, as Vickel does," added Zyl; "and if you have a brood of chicks, Jack, you need not mind."

There was a sly twinkle in the Dutch boy's eyes as he rubbed his hands together, and even Mr. Treby had to own it was cleverly done.

Sandford Algarkirke was beyond the reach of either thanks or refusals, as Zyl averred. Jack must pocket his English pride and let his Vickel keep her mate.

"It was all my plan," observed Genderen, her round face radiating with pleasure. "I was sure it would please Jack better than anything else; and now, if he takes care of his chicks, by the time he is a man, he will have as fine a flock of ostriches as any farmer in Africa."

"Do you hear that, Jack?" said Mr. Treby, coming forward. "Like Whittington's cat, your snow-feathered queen will make you a wealthy man."

Jack drew a deep breath of gratitude and delight as he looked up in his father's face, exclaiming, "Oh, isn't it kind of Mr. Algarkirke? I always did like him very much, except when he called Sannie 'a fatted calf,' Why didn't she come with you?"

"Oh, Sannie!" grumbled Zyl. "You are never easy without Sannie."

As usual Zyl was right. Jack never was quite happy without her any more, and when the wealthy manhood his father had predicted drew near, he went one day to Jaarsveldt and brought her home a bride.

THE END.