No, by the Lord, no! You can't take me in! My mother
didn't wean me on Monday. One wink of my eye and I see the whole thing.
I'll have no tramps sleeping on my farm," cried Tant Sannie blowing. "No,
by the devil, no! not though he had sixty-times-six red noses."
There the German overseer mildly interposed that the man was not a tramp,
but a highly respectable individual, whose horse had died by an accident
three days before.
"Don't tell me," cried the Boer-woman; "the man isn't born that can take me
in. If he'd had money, wouldn't he have bought a horse? Men who walk are
thieves, liars, murderers, Rome's priests, seducers! I see the devil in
his nose!" cried Tant Sannie shaking her fist at him; "and to come walking
into the house of this Boer's child and shaking hands as though he came on
horseback! Oh, no, no!"
The stranger took off his hat, a tall, battered chimneypot, and disclosed a
bald head, at the back of which was a little fringe of curled white hair,
and he bowed to Tant Sannie.
"What does she remark, my friend?" he inquired, turning his crosswise-
looking eyes on the old German.
The German rubbed his old hands and hesitated.
"Ah--well--ah--the--Dutch--you know--do not like people who walk--in this
country--ah!"
"My dear friend," said the stranger, laying his hand on the German's arm,
"I should have bought myself another horse, but crossing, five days ago, a
full river, I lost my purse--a purse with five hundred pounds in it.
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