The Hottentot boy ran down to see if he could catch it; it had
sunk to the bottom. I never drank again. But, Lyndall, sin looks much
more terrible to those who look at it than to those who do it. A convict,
or a man who drinks, seems something so far off and horrible when we see
him; but to himself he seems quite near to us, and like us. We wonder what
kind of a creature he is; but he is just we, ourselves. We are only the
wood, the knife that carves on us is the circumstance.
"I do not know why I kept on working so hard for that master. I think it
was as the oxen come every day and stand by the yokes; they do not know
why. Perhaps I would have been with him still; but one day we started with
loads for the Diamond Fields. The oxen were very thin now, and they had
been standing about in the yoke all day without food, while the wagons were
being loaded. Not far from the town was a hill. When we came to the foot
the first wagon stuck fast. I tried for a little while to urge the oxen,
but I soon saw the one span could never pull it up. I went to the other
wagon to loosen that span to join them on in front, but the transport-
rider, who was lying at the back of the wagon, jumped out.
"'They shall bring it up the hill; and if half of them die for it they
shall do it alone,' he said.
"He was not drunk, but in bad temper, for he had been drunk the night
before.
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