Swallow

"I will," I answered, "but tell me first, the ship India was wrecked in the year 1824, was she not?"

"Undoubtedly," answered the lawyer.

"Well, have you heard that another ship called the Flora, travelling from the Cape I know not whither, was lost on this coast in the same month of the following year, and that a few of her passengers escaped?"

"I have heard of it," he said.

"Good. Now look here," and going to a chest that stood beneath the window, I lifted from it the old Bible that belonged to my grandfather and father, on the white pages at the beginning of which are written the record of many births, marriages, deaths and other notable events that had happened in the family. Opening it I searched and pointed to a certain entry inscribed in the big writing of my husband Jan, and in ink which was somewhat faint, for the ink that the traders sold us in those days had little virtue in it. Beneath this entry were others made by Jan in later years, telling of things that had happened to us, such as the death of his great-aunt who left him money, the outbreak of small-pox on the farm, and the number of people who died from it, the attack of a band of the red Kaffirs upon our house, when by the mercy of God we beat them off, leaving twelve of their dead behind them, but taking as many of our best oxen, and so forth.

"Read," I said, and the interpreter read as follows: "On the twelfth day of September in the year 1825 (the date being written in letters) our little daughter Suzanne found a starving English boy in a kloof, who had been shipwrecked on the coast. We have taken him in as a gift of the Lord. He says that his name is Rolf Kenzie."

"You see the date," I said.

"Yes," answered the lawyer, "and it has not been altered!"

"No," I added, "it has not been altered;" but I did not tell them that Jan had not written it down till afterwards, and then by mistake had recorded the year in which he wrote, refusing to change it, although I pointed out the error, because, he said, there was no room, and that it would make a mess in the book.

"There is one more thing," I went on; "you say the mother of him you seek was a great lady. Well, I saw the body of the mother of the boy who was found, and it was that of a common person very roughly clad with coarse underclothes and hands hard with labour, on which there was but one ring, and that of silver. Here it is," and going to a drawer I took from it a common silver ring which I once bought from a pedlar because he worried me into it. "Lastly, gentlemen, the father of our lad was no lord, unless in your country it is the custom of lords to herd sheep, for the boy told me that in his own land his father was a shepherd, and that he was travelling to some distant English colony to follow his trade. That is all I have to say about it, though I am sorry that the lad is not here to tell it you himself."