Sabine Baring-Gould

“ You have sinned. You have thrust yourself into the council-chamber of God. You have claimed to exercise vengeance yourself, and not left it to Him to whom vengeance in right belongs.”
“I know it now,” breathed the widow. “And now you must atone for the curses by prayers. You have brought Jacob Van Heeren to his death by your imprecations, and now, fold your hands and pray to God for him—for him, your son's murderer. ”

“ I cannot move it. Quick, quick, take it away.”
“I repeat there is nothing there,” said his wife. “Pull off his stocking,” said Pete Van Heeren; “he has got a chill in his foot, and fancies this nonsense. He has been dreaming.”
“It was not a dream,” roared Jacob; “I saw him as clearly as I see you, and he wrapped my foot up in that accursed flag.”
“Accursed flag!” exclaimed Samuel, the second son. “That's a fine way to speak of it, father, when it served you so well.”
“Take it off, you dogs!” yelled the old man, “and don't stand staring and barking round me.” ”

“ The White Flag
A percentage of the South African Boers—how large or how small that percentage is has not been determined—is possessed of a rudimentary conscience, much as the oyster has incipient eyes, and the snake initiatory articulations for feet, which in the course of long ages may, under suitable conditions, develop into an active faculty.
If Jacob Van Heeren possessed any conscience at all it was the merest protoplasm of one. He occupied Heerendorp, a ramshackle farmhouse under a kopje, and had cattle and horses, also a wife and grownup sons and daughters. ”

“ Would it be righteous in Him to suffer the murderer of her son to thrive? If God be merciful, He is also just. If His ear is open to the prayer for help, He must as well listen to the cry for vengeance. ”

“ He had been looking at the cow, and feeling it, when down out of the hayloft had come leaping the form of the Rooinek lieutenant, which had sprung in between him and the cow, and, stooping, had wrapped a white rag round his thigh, above the knee. ”

“ Winifred Jones resolved on trying. She went to the workhouse and sought out the woman, an old and infirm creature, and had a conference with her. She found the woman, a poor, decrepit creature, very shy of speaking about the well, very unwilling to be drawn into a confession of the extent of her knowledge, very much afraid of the magistrates and the master of the workhouse punishing her if she had anything to do with the well ”