Not being able to do so, after a while he glanced over the fellow's
shoulder to watch him work. The boy carved letters into the back.
"If," said the stranger, with his melodious voice, rich with a sweetness
that never showed itself in the clouded eyes--for sweetness will linger on
in the voice long after it has died out in the eyes--"if for such a
purpose, why write that upon it?"
The boy glanced round at him, but made no answer. He had almost forgotten
his presence.
"You surely believe," said the stranger, "that some day, sooner or later,
these graves will open, and those Boer-uncles with their wives walk about
here in the red sand, with the very fleshly legs with which they went to
sleep? Then why say, 'He sleeps forever?' You believe he will stand up
again?"
"Do you?" asked the boy, lifting for an instant his heavy eyes to the
stranger's face.
Half taken aback the stranger laughed. It was as though a curious little
tadpole which he held under his glass should suddenly lift its tail and
begin to question him.
"I?--no." He laughed his short thick laugh. "I am a man who believes
nothing, hopes nothing, fears nothing, feels nothing. I am beyond the pale
of humanity; no criterion of what you should be who live here among your
ostriches and bushes."
The next moment the stranger was surprised by a sudden movement on the part
of the fellow, which brought him close to the stranger's feet.
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