"Get well, get well as soon as you can, Hernan Pereira." It was at this juncture that Marais arrived, accompanied by Marie.

Where he came from I do not know, but I think he must have been keeping in the background on purpose to see what kind of a reception Pereira would meet with.
"Silence, brothers," he said.

"Is this the way you greet my nephew, who has returned from the gate of death, when you should be on your knees thanking God for his deliverance ?" "Then go on your knees and thank Him yourself, Henri Marais," screamed the irrepressible Vrouw Prinsloo.

"I give thanks for the safe return of Allan here, though it is true they would be warmer if he had left this stinkcat behind him.

Allemachte! Henri Marais, why do you make so much of this Portuguese fellow?
Has he bewitched you?
Or is it because he is your sister's son, or because you want to force Marie there to marry him?
Or is it, perhaps, that he knows of something bad in your past life, and you have to bribe him to keep his mouth shut ?" Now, whether this last unpleasant suggestion was a mere random arrow drawn from Vrouw Prinsloo's well-stored quiver, or whether the vrouw had got hold of the tail-end of some long-buried truth, I do not know.