“Kopje Alone,

“Monday Afternoon.

“DEAR SISTER:

“It is hardly six months since I left you to come to this spot, yet could you now see me I know what you would say, I know what mother would say — ‘Can that be our Greg — that thing with the strange look in his eyes?’

“Yes, Jemima, it is your Greg, and the change has been coming over me ever since I came here; but it is greatest since yesterday. You know what sorrows I have passed through, Jemima: how unjustly I was always treated at school, the masters keeping me back and calling me a blockhead, though, as they themselves allowed, I had the best memory of any boy in the school, and could repeat whole books from beginning to end. You know how cruelly father always used me, calling me a noodle and a milk-sop, just because he couldn’t understand my fine nature. You know how he has made a farmer of me instead of a minister, as I ought to have been; you know it all, Jemima; and how I have borne it all, not as a woman, who whines for every touch, but as a man should — in silence.

“But there are things, there is a thing, which the soul longs to pour forth into a kindred ear.

“Dear sister, have you ever known what it is to keep wanting and wanting and wanting to kiss some one’s mouth, and you may not; to touch some one’s hand, and you cannot? I am in love, Jemima.

“The old Dutch-woman from whom I hire this place has a little step-daughter, and her name begins with E.

“She is English. I do not know how her father came to marry a Boer-woman. It makes me feel so strange to put down that letter, that I can hardly go on writing — E. I’ve loved her ever since I came here. For weeks I have not been able to eat or drink; my very tobacco when I smoke has no taste; and I can remain for no more than five minutes in one place, and sometimes feel as though I were really going mad.

“Every evening I go there to fetch my milk. Yesterday she gave me some coffee. The spoon fell on the ground. She picked it up; when she gave it me her finger touched mine. Jemima, I do not know if I fancied it — I shivered hot, and she shivered too! I thought, ‘It is all right; she will be mine; she loves me!’ Just then, Jemima, in came a fellow, a great, coarse fellow, a German — a ridiculous fellow, with curls right down to his shoulders; it makes one sick to look at him. He’s only a servant of the Boer-woman’s, and a low, vulgar uneducated thing, that’s never been to boarding-school in his life. He had been to the next farm seeking sheep. When he came in she said, ‘Good-evening, Waldo. Have some coffee!’ and she kissed him.