Waldo sacrifices his lamb chop on a makeshift altar and believes God has rejected him like Cain when nothing happens.

A stranger named Bonaparte Blenkins arrives at the farm claiming aristocratic connections to Napoleon Bonaparte and a fortune lost at sea.

Bonaparte delivers a rousing Sunday sermon condemning liars to hellfire while wearing Otto's borrowed black suit.

Bonaparte secretly tells Tant' Sannie that Otto has undermined her authority and believes she is in love with him.

Tant' Sannie confronts Otto with Bonaparte's accusations and orders him to leave while Bonaparte stands beside her condemning him.

After writing a farewell letter to Lyndall and Em, Otto reads his Bible and dies peacefully in the night.

Bonaparte laughs as he tells Waldo that his father has already been buried by the time Waldo returned from the mill.

Bonaparte listens to Waldo describe his sheep-shearing invention, feigns admiration, then crushes the machine beneath his foot.

Tant' Sannie overhears Bonaparte courting her niece Trana in the loft and dumps a barrel of pickling liquid on him.

Gregory Rose, an Englishman leasing half the farm, pursues Em with passionate declarations of love and they become engaged.

Lyndall returns from four years at a girls' finishing school and tells Waldo how women are trained to serve men.

Em sees Gregory fetch water for Lyndall through the window and breaks off her engagement to him that same evening.

Lyndall secretly meets the unnamed gentleman, refuses his marriage proposal, but agrees to leave the farm with him to avoid scandal.

After her attempts to recover fail, Lyndall dies gazing at her own reflection in a mirror on the road back to the farm.

Em brings a glass of milk to a sleeping Waldo sitting in the sunshine, but he will not wake.

The story opens with young Waldo's crisis of faith on an isolated South African farm, where the children's vulnerability makes them easy prey for the manipulative confidence man Bonaparte Blenkins. Bonaparte engineers the expulsion and death of the kindly German overseer Otto, then torments Waldo until Tant' Sannie finally catches him courting her niece and expels him. Years later, the arrival of Englishman Gregory Rose upsets the farm's fragile order as Lyndall returns from school with radical ideas about women's independence, destabilizing Gregory's engagement to Em. Lyndall secretly arranges to leave with an unnamed gentleman rather than submit to conventional marriage, but he abandons her after she gives birth to a child who lives only two hours. Gregory nurses Lyndall until she dies on the road back to the farm, and the novel closes with Waldo's implied death, leaving only Em—the most conventional of the three friends—alive.

The headline events driving the farm's central narrative.

Tant' Sannie tosses in nightmares while Waldo lies awake in the outbuilding agonizing over the souls of those dying without salvation.

Lyndall and Em sit under ancient rock carvings and discuss their futures; Lyndall declares her firm intention to go to school.

Lyndall brings supper to Bonaparte and notices that his worn boots suggest far more walking than a single day's journey.

Otto gives Bonaparte his best hat and his own Sunday suit, surrendering his most cherished role as the farm's preacher.

Bonaparte performs elaborate grief over his dead wife before Tant' Sannie and Otto, then laughs to himself and plots to marry Tant' Sannie.

Em discovers a hidden box of books in the loft belonging to her father and offers them to the grief-stricken Waldo.

Bonaparte knocks Waldo into the pigsty, seizes his book, throws it into the cooking fire, and claims the loft key.

Tant' Sannie is courted by widower Little Piet Vander Walt, who says a dream told him to marry a fat woman.

Lyndall and Waldo ride together to Tant' Sannie's wedding and debate the burdens and responsibilities of having children.

Gregory asks to drive Lyndall home from the wedding while Waldo and Em follow together later in the wagon.

Gregory proposes marriage to Lyndall after Em ends their engagement; Lyndall accepts only if he serves her and demands nothing in return.

Em tells Lyndall she has dreamed about Lyndall's dead baby and assures her cousin she is forgiven.

Lyndall leaves the farm with the unnamed gentleman, pausing at Otto's grave to say goodbye and leaving £50 for Em.

Gregory tracks Lyndall to a distant hotel room where she lies bedridden, abandoned by the gentleman, her newborn child already dead.

Gregory returns to the farm and recounts to Em the full story of finding, nursing, and losing Lyndall on the road.

The novel's depth comes from smaller but significant moments: the children's dreams for their futures under ancient rock carvings, the subtle signs of Bonaparte's deceit that only Lyndall notices, and the social rituals of courtship and marriage that govern isolated farm life. Bonaparte entrenches himself by exploiting Otto's generosity and suppressing Waldo's intellectual curiosity, burning his book and seizing control of the loft. Tant' Sannie's own courtship becomes the occasion for a wedding celebration that serves as the scene where Gregory's loyalty visibly shifts away from Em. Lyndall extracts a conditional promise of marriage from Gregory before arranging her departure with the unnamed gentleman, quietly leaving Em a gift of money and pausing at Otto's grave to say goodbye. Gregory eventually tracks Lyndall to a distant hotel room too late to save her, and returns to the farm carrying the full story of her suffering and death.

The supporting scenes and relationships that give the story its texture.

Waldo mourns his lost connection to God, still believing in Christ but feeling utterly forsaken and spiritually alone on the farm.

Lyndall openly contradicts Bonaparte during his lessons, refusing to accept his invented facts, while Em cries over her cousin's stubbornness.

Bonaparte steals Otto's small wedding ring while searching his room; Lyndall later admits she released an ostrich to torment him.

Bonaparte whips Waldo for allegedly stealing dried peaches and locks him in the barn; Lyndall frees him and promises they will one day have power.

Waldo reflects on his full spiritual journey from childhood religious ecstasy to despair and finally arrives at a belief in divine unity within nature.

A mysterious stranger on horseback tells Waldo an allegory about a youth who spends his entire life searching for the bird called Truth.

The stranger gives Waldo a book and rides away; Waldo ties his carved grave post to the man's saddlebags as a gift in return.

Gregory writes to his sister dismissing Lyndall as arrogant and disobedient while his letter reveals an unmistakable growing obsession with her.

Lyndall tells Waldo she would only marry a man who wished he were a woman; she laughs when Waldo admits he would not.

Waldo presents Lyndall with a carved wooden box decorated with delicate flowers and small spiky protuberances nestled among the petals.

Waldo leaves the farm the morning after Em breaks off her engagement, uncertain whether he will ever return.

The unnamed gentleman abandons Lyndall at the end of her pregnancy; she gives birth to a child who lives only two hours.

Gregory disguises himself in women's clothing found in the loft and poses as a nurse to dedicate himself to caring for the bedridden Lyndall.

Waldo returns home after more than a year away and writes feverishly to Lyndall through the night, before Em tells him at dawn that she has died.

Tant' Sannie returns to the farm with her husband and newborn baby; Gregory and Em plan to marry in accordance with Lyndall's final wishes.

The novel's deepest drama plays out through revelations and turning points that shape the characters' worldviews and destinies. Waldo's wavering faith is steadily undermined by Bonaparte's cruelty and the hypocrisy of the adults around him, before being resolved through a pantheistic vision of nature's unity, crystallized by a mysterious stranger who gives him both a book and a life-defining allegory. Lyndall's defiant intelligence is established early—she challenges Bonaparte's lies and rescues Waldo from the barn—and matures into a full feminist philosophy upon her return from finishing school. Gregory's arc moves from dismissive arrogance toward self-sacrifice as his devotion to Lyndall leads him to abandon conventional masculinity and nurse her in disguise. Lyndall's refusal to marry the father of her child results in abandonment and the death of her newborn, with Gregory's devoted care unable to prevent her death on the road home. The novel closes by restoring the farm's social order through conventional marriage, while Waldo's quiet death suggests that those who question that order cannot survive within it.