SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS CHAPTER I. to V.-Cornelius Ficks, son of a Transvaal Field Cornet, seeks the hand of Hilda, youngest daughter of Piet Rieker, a loyal Anglo-Dutchman in Natal. Reginaid Curtis, an English officer in camp at Ladysmith, arrives at the home of the Riekers with a letter from relatives in Devonshire, and is also attracted by Hilda. Paul Kruger and a German, Franz Hausman, Commander of the Boer Artillery, meet to discuss the plan of campaign. Hausman makes a tour of inspection of the intended field of operations, accompanied by Cornelius Ficks as guide. They reach Rieker's farm, where the German is smitten by Grietje, the elder daughter. Cornelius, jealous of the young Englishman, Curtis, make an attempt on his life, which is frustrated by Hausman.

CHAPTER VI. to XI.-It being rumored that the Free Staters have crossed the Drakensbergs, the Chief at Ladysmith sends Captain Curtis with a few men, on a scouting expedition. They come across a party of mounted Boers, making for the frontier, with Grietje and Hilda Rieker, who are being abducted by Cornelius Ficks. The girls are rescued. Ladysmith is invested. Sortie, in which Lieut. Grainger and sixteen "Loamshires are cut off from the main body.

I

CHAPTER XII.

THE DEEDS OF A NIGHT.

T was never very clearly ascertained, as I have before hinted, how Lieutenant Grainger and his sixteen Loamshires came to be cut off from the main body of the troops during that retreat, whether it was during the rush to aid the Berkshires, or whether they got mixed up with one of the Boer commandos in the melée just before the retreat began. At all events, Grainger suddenly found himself and his sixteen men alone in a narrow pass between two steep walls of rock. He pressed forward, thinking to creep round the base of the kopje-it was, so far as he could judge, only a stupendous bowlder on the right, and so rejoin his friends in the more open veldt that lay between them and the beleaguered town.

But when they had gone some fifty yards they found that the wall of rock on the right rose suddenly, while the path dipped into a rugged, narrow valley, in which stood a portion of the Boer camp, by no means left unguarded, as Grainger could see by the shadowy forms flitting hither and thither between the roughly constructed wooden huts.

It was an ideal place for a small camp, guarded as it was all round with precipitous walls of rock, and entered only by that narrow pass, which a dozen men could have held against an army. For a moment a wild idea of rushing the camp flitted through Grainger's mind, but he was young and doubtful and thought of his men.

With a whispered word he turned them about, but hardly had they begun to retrace their steps when, like a huge wave from the open sea rushing up between the banks of a narrow river, a crowd of Boers was flung headlong into the opening, as Grainger judged from the shouts outside, by a sudden rush of the Lancers, who were hovering on either flank of the retreating infantry.

Grainger's resolution was taken in a moment.

"One volley, boys," he said, " and then the bayonet! It's all or nothing nowdeath or freedom!"

The Boers had turned, and were hold-, ing the opening of the pass against the Lancers, while behind him Grainger could hear hoarse shouts from the camp and the rushing of many feet.

"Quick now-steady!" he said hoarse

ly, and the word passed softly from one to the other.

The Boers who were fighting desperately at the entrance to the pass never knew exactly what happened at that moment. All they could say was that from somewhere behind them, apparently from their own camp, came a volley which, in that narrow causeway and from forty yards' range, acted on them as the powder of a gun acts on the shell, and the more as, a minute after, a regiment of the rooineks-the Boers swore, and with perfect sincerity, that there were five hundred of them-dashed over them with the "long knives," literally carving for themselves a path in the open.

But alas! Grainger and his men were just too late. The Lancers had done what they had been sent to do. They had flung back into their own kennel a crowd of the Boers, and had cleared the way for the infantry, and then, knowing nothing of the men who had so unexpectedly turned the flight of the Boers into a slaughter, they swung round and rejoined their own.

men.

Grainger found himself in the open, but the fighting had rolled five hundred yards to the northeast, and again he was alone. He was not, however, dismayed. About a hundred yards to the left of them was a low kopje strewn from base to summit with massive crags. If they could reach that, they might lie there concealed until the road was clear for them. As coolly as if he were on the parade-ground at Aldershot he made for this spot at the double, and his men with equal imperturbability

followed him.

Half-way to the kopje for which the Loamshires were making was a shallow sluit, in English a dried-up watercourse. Grainger knew the district slightly, and was looking out for this, but ere he reached it his course was suddenly checked.

From the long grass in which the sluit was buried, a figure sprang suddenly upwards, discharged his rifle into the running group of British, and then with a cry, "The rooineks-the rooineks are here," dived again into the scrub and disappeared.

A quick dropping volley from the sluit showed that the Boer who had given the

warning was not the only one there, but Grainger did not stop for them. With a harsh shout he leapt into the ditch, alighting on the prone form of a Boer, whom he immediately thrust through with his sword, while half a dozen others, who had arisen, were flung aside by the bayonets of the Loamshires and left dead or dying behind them. Another two minutes of breathless rush, and the handful of British were brought up dead by a steep wall of rock.

"To th' roight, sor-r-th' roight!" shouted Micky, and Grainger made for the right.

But there was a muffled clatter of hoofs on the veldt, hoarse shouts, a rumble of strange oaths in Biblical Dutch, and Grainger, looking over his shoulder, knew that he was trapped.

Lay down your guns!" cried a hoarse voice in English. "Lay down your guns, or we fire!"

And Grainger wheeling round saw the weird night radiance glinting on a couple of hundred rifle-barrels. For a moment he hesitated. A volley and a charge, and all would be over. They would lose life, but not honor. Then he thought of the men beside him, and his lips tightened. They were one to twelve. He had no right to sacrifice their lives to his own sentiment, though he knew that were he to say the word his men would even throw themselves against the adamantine death in front.

"I yield!" he cried.

"Then stay where you are," said th voice that had summoned him to surrender. "The daylight will be here in a few minutes, and then we can see you. Don't try to move, or we will blow the lot of you to fragments."

When the daylight came with its steellike misty radiance, it saw the Lieutenant seated on a bowlder biting his lip and looking as if he had a hard struggle to keep back the tears.

Your sword, rooinek," said the blackbearded Boer who was directing operations.

Grainger swung round and thrusting his weapon some six or eight inches into & crevice among the rocks broke it in two, then handed the pieces to his captor. He of the black beard only laughed.

"It's hard on you," he said; "but better luck next time."

Then he collected the muskets from the sixteen Loamshires and handed them to one of the youths who had followed him. "Three of my men are wounded," said Grainger.

"So! Van Slyt, run and bring up three ambulances quick. You stop here," he added, turning to Grainger-he spoke excellent English by the way-" until you get the word. They will bring you food and see after your wounded. If you try to escape you will be shot."

Grainger returned to his seat on the bowlder saying nothing. The sixteen Loamshires were not so reticent.

"It's har-rd luck," murmured Micky; "but nivver say die. Iv coorse they'll tak' us to Prethoria. An' it 'll be har-rder luck if I can't give 'em th' slip afoor its over."

But he did not say this aloud. It was something he wanted to talk to Jim about

on the strict Q.T.," as the Cockney would have put it.

Jim Quigley himself made quite an oration on the event.

*

The stars must be supposed to represent the Cockney's opinions of the incident. They were not couched in the language that usually obtains in Mayfair drawingrooms and high schools for young ladies. But they were none the less a very striking and complete commentary on the situation.

CHAPTER XIII.

A NECESSARY DIGRESSION.

It was as long ago as April, 1899.

Dr. Leyds, seated in his pleasant chambers in Brussels, was bending over a document in the crabbed and not too legible handwriting of the State Secretary at Pretoria, which he was laboriously translating by the aid of a cipher key held in place by his left elbow. An important document evidently, for Leyds would not even trust his own secretary, whom yet

he trusted above all other men on earth, to decipher it.

"So!" he cried, when, after an hour and a half's ceaseless work the State Secretary's letter lay before him in good plain Dutch: "So! It has come at last!

He rose from his seat and stood by the window, gazing down at the brilliantly dressed throng of Belgians passing and repassing in the glittering sunlight,-gazing down at them, but seeing them not, for his thoughts were far away across the wide breadth of ocean among the people whom he loved, and for whom he had worked, patiently, silently, for years, with his heart ever fixed on the day that was now so near the dawn.

66

That

"We shall be ready by October 10th," the State Secretary's dispatch had said. Steyn has definitely promised to join us -it was that we were waiting for so long -and the Afrikander Bund has ready 50,000 men. You have six months, and the guns and ammunition from Krupp's and Creuzot's must be here by then. is your task. Oom Paul is playing with Chamberlain as the cat with the mouse, and will keep him quietly going until we are ready. Then Piet will take the thing in hand, and long ere a single British regiment can cross the seas, Natal will be ours. Cape Colony may be left to the fifty thousand Dutchmen whom Cronje will lead. We count upon you, too, to bring the nations of Europe about the ears of these rooinek bandits."

This is a very free translation of the State Secretary's dispatch, and I leave out altogether the many formal clauses that followed, giving Leyds instructions as to this and that. Only one is of more than passing interest. "I have cabled you a credit of £500,000. We cannot afford to spare money now. Spend it in Berlin, and Paris, and your own Brussels; aye, in London itself. We look to you to keep us posted with the news from London, and see to it also that none of the British regiments leave their country without some men in their midst whose pockets are full of Transvaal gold."

Dr. Leyds smiled slowly as he read this clause over again.

That goes without saying," he muttered, "and yet it 's none so easy to buy an

Englishman. A Frenchman, a German, a Belgian-yes-cartloads at a franc or two a head; but the buying of an English soldier needs great art and much money." He walked to his bureau, and picking up a telegram form wrote the following laconic message:— Come. L.

The message was addressed to Captain Smithson at the headquarters of the Loamshire regiment, Carchester, and by noon the next day the captain had answered the summons in person.

The two men met like brothers. "Well," said Smithson, speaking Dutch and speaking it like a native. "I should have come without your summons. news for you."

"Yes?"

I have

If you knew what this meant to me!" he cried. "I seem to have spent centuries over there, in that accursed country, stifling all sentiment, all emotion, keeping my eye fixed ever on the goal, and now, and now-what are the commands?"

"The same as ever. Just as Oom Paul told you when years and years ago he sent you on your mission. You are to gain the confidence of the rooineks, to learn their secrets, and to betray them. Sometime, when the war breaks out, you may by a word bring fearful disaster on the British troops. You have gained their confidence?

دو

the moment of my country's victory I may look into the eyes of death!"

But all that was as long ago as April, '99.

CHAPTER XIV.

PRESIDENT KRUGER'S SIGNATURE.

The Loamshires were guarding the outposts, and Reginald was making his rounds, seeing that all was right, and casting keen glances across the veldt. All at once he was brought up by the murmuring sound of voices apparently on the other side of the mound of earth, which the trench-diggers had thrown up. He crept up and crawled, almost snake-like, to the top of the mound. There, peering over, he saw indistinctly the blurred figures of two men, both lying full length, and conversing with their heads close together. Reginald strained his ears, as much to see if he could identify the voices as to catch the trend of their conversation.

The men were conversing for the most part in whispers, but every now and again their voices would rumble hoarsely for a minute or two, until the one would notice that the other was speaking loudly, and utter whispered warning.

"Sunday!" he heard one of the men say, in one of these involuntary outbreaks. "The verdoomed rooineks have no religion."

The other man laughed. Evidently his piety was less stern than that of his companion.

"Well, next Sunday is the day, anyway. They start at one o'clock, and will attempt to capture Klucher's Kopje.

"We shall be ready for them," said the other man grimly.

Reginald ground his teeth. He knew that a carefully-laid plan had been made for a night sortie to Klucher's Kopje, where the Boers had lately mounted a big gun, and here was the news being conveyed straight to the enemy's camp. No wonder they had met with reverses,-no wonder their best-laid plans had " ganged agley!" He rapidly reviewed the situation. If he alarmed the guard the men might escape in the gathering mist. He quickly made up his mind. It was a fearful thing to do, but for the safety of the camp it must be done.

He drew his revolver from his belt, and took careful aim at one of the blurred masses on the ground below him. The next moment he felt the earth slipping away from beneath him, and as he fired, the whole bank gave way, carrying him with a rush into the trench, and burying him beneath a mass of débris.

He had just time ere the earth closed over him to hear an almost blood-curdling shriek, the shriek that can never be mistaken, the shriek of a man in the last agony a dark figure flitted across him, treading underfoot his one free hand, and disappearing in the darkness, and then for the space of a breath all was still.

The next instant, the whole camp was ringing with the alarms, and Reginald, shaking himself free from the earth which had temporarily buried him, found himself in very unpleasant danger of being shot by his own men. Fortunately they recognized his voice, and the next moment he had sent some of them flying in the direction in which the suspected spy had disappeared, while others he sent for lanterns.

The man on the other side of the mound was lying stark and still, with his face buried in the earth, his arms doubled under him as if he had made an attempt to rise.

men.

This 'un 's dead enuff," said one of the "It fair in the neck-'ole, too." Reginald took one of the lanterns to see if he could trace the footsteps of the man who had fled. He could not do this, but just on the other side of the trench he found a little fragment of blue paper. He picked it up and glanced at it carelessly, then dropped his lantern with a crash. What is it, sir?" cried one of the men, running up.

Nothing," said Reginald.

But it was something, for that tiny slip of paper bore the signature of Paul Kruger, and ran:—

Pass the bearer of this safely through at all times. He is engaged on the business of the Republic. PAUL KRUGER. Reginald seized another lantern, and read the paper through again. Then, with a whispered order to his men, he set off at a run towards the General's quarters, taking the weird little document direct to Sir George White.