“Come, Em,” said Lyndall, lifting her small, proud head, “let us go in. We will not stay to hear such language.”

She looked into the Boer-woman’s eyes. Tant’ Sannie understood the meaning of the look if not the words. She waddled after them, and caught Em by the arm. She had struck Lyndall once years before, and had never done it again, so she took Em.

“So you will defy me too, will you, you Englishman’s ugliness!” she cried, as with one hand she forced the child down, and held her head tightly against her knee; with the other she beat her first upon one cheek, and then upon the other.

For one instant Lyndall looked on, then she laid her small fingers on the Boer-woman’s arm. With the exertion of half its strength Tant’ Sannie might have flung the girl back upon the stones. It was not the power of the slight fingers, tightly though they clinched her broad wrist — so tightly that at bed-time the marks were still there; but the Boer-woman looked into the clear eyes and at the quivering white lips, and with a half-surprised curse, relaxed her hold. The girl drew Em’s arm through her own.

“Move!” she said to Bonaparte, who stood in the door, and he, Bonaparte the invincible, in the hour of his triumph, moved to give her place.

The Hottentot ceased to laugh, and an uncomfortable silence fell on all the three in the doorway.

Once in their room, Em sat down on the floor and wailed bitterly. Lyndall lay on the bed with her arm drawn across her eyes, very white and still.

“Hoo, hoo!” cried Em; “and they won’t let him take the gray mare; and Waldo has gone to the mill. Hoo, hoo! And perhaps they won’t let us go and say good-by to him, Hoo, hoo, hoo!”

“I wish you would be quiet,” said Lyndall, without moving. “Does it give you such felicity to let Bonaparte know he is hurting you? We will ask no one. It will be supper time soon. Listen, — and when you hear the chink of the knives and forks we will go out and see him.”

Em suppressed her sobs and listened intently, kneeling at the door. Suddenly some one came to the window and put the shutter up.

“Who was that?” said Lyndall, starting.

“The girl, I suppose,” said Em. “How early she is this evening!”

But Lyndall sprang from the bed and seized the handle of the door, shaking it fiercely. The door was locked on the outside. She ground her teeth.

“What is the matter?” asked Em.

The room was in perfect darkness now.

“Nothing,” said Lyndall, quietly, “only they have locked us in.”

She turned, and went back to bed again. But ere long Em heard a sound of movement. Lyndall had climbed up into the window, and with her fingers felt the woodwork that surrounded the panes. Slipping down, the girl loosened the iron knob from the foot of the bedstead, and climbing up again she broke with it every pane of glass in the window, beginning at the top and ending at the bottom.