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'But what do you get paid?'

After many false starts Hilary discovered that they got paid nothing in cash. They did receive their clothes, and their horses, and their food, and when they fell ill, Mrs. Van Doorn medicated them.

'Are you free to leave De Kraal?' Hilary asked.

'Where would we go?'

Three times Saltwood questioned the Hottentots, trying to ascertain whether they were in fact slaves, but he never reached a satisfactory answer, so he broached the subject with Van Doorn himself: 'Would you call your Hottentots slaves, like the Madagascans?'

'No! No! They can leave any time they wish.'

'Have any ever left?'

'Why should they?'

Hilary dropped this line of investigation, turning his attention to the slaves, whom he found to be in good condition but surly in manner, unlike the Hottentots who worked the free range. One of the Madagascan men showed scars, and when Saltwood inquired about them, he found that the man had run away, been recaptured and punished.

'Why did you leave?' he asked.

'To be free.'

'Will you run away again?'

'Yes, to be free.'

'Will you be punished again?'

'If he catch me.'

When Hilary asked Van Doorn about this, the Boer could not mask his disgust: 'He's my slave. I paid good money for him. We can't let our slaves get the idea they can run away at will. Of course they have to be punished.'

'You seem to have whipped him rather harshly.'

'I disciplined him.' When he saw how Saltwood flinched, he said sharply, 'Dominee, in the old days he'd have had his nose cut off, his ears, one hand if he persisted. These are slaves, and they must be disciplined, as the Bible says.'

Apart from the Madagascan, the Van Doorn slaves and Hottentots showed evidences of good treatment, and Saltwood said so, whereupon Van Doorn confessed: 'We live at the edge of the world, Dominee. We spend years without seeing a predikant. We must have slaves to operate the farm. We must have Hottentots to run the cattle and sheep. We rely upon instructions from God and the direction we receive from this.' He indicated a huge old Bible, and when Saltwood took it in his hands, and pried open the brass clasps, and saw the heavy pages within, and the one on which Van Doorns had for a hundred and fifty years kept their family records, he was awed by the simple righteousness of this frontier Boer, and knew that if Van Doorn asked him to be a witness at his trial in Graaff-Reinet, he would out of simple decency have to at least testify as to his character.

He was little prepared for what Lodevicus asked him to do now: 'Dominee, we live alone, terribly alone. Would you baptize our grandson?'

Saltwood stiffened. 'At the mission you refused to pray with me.'

'I was a fool,' the old man said. 'Wilhelmina, come in here!'

The smiling Wilhelmina came into the room, bowed to the missionary, and stood with arms akimbo. 'Tell the dominee,' her husband said. 'Tell him what I told you when I reached home.'

'From where?'

'From the mission,' he snapped. 'When I got home from that visit to the mission.' When she stood bewildered, he said more gently, 'When I told you I had refused to pray with him.'

'You said you were a damned fool, and you were.' Smiling at the visitor, she started to retire, but her husband said, 'I've asked him to baptize the boy, and he's agreed.'

'I do indeed,' Hilary said, and the little boy, struggling with a puppy, was brought into the room, and water was provided by one of the slaves, and the solemn rite was performed. But as it ended, Reverend Saltwood noticed that the little girl who had fetched the water lingered, twisting her fingers in her gray dress, and it was in this sanctified moment that he met the child Emma, daughter of the Madagascan.

She was ten that year, a bright child often perplexed by what she witnessed. Her face had that sooty-blackness which seemed almost blue, and was so attractive, as if God had said, 'Emma, since you're to be black, why not be really black?' Her face was