going to get this escort safe and sound to the
Kangala Camp. One more occasion for keeping one's eyes wide-open."

The object of this inquiry was a thick-set, very black-hued Kafir, at
the present moment not untrousered, for he wore the F.A.M. Police
uniform of dark cord, and was driving one of the two ammunition waggons,
which, with their escort, were just getting out of sight of the solid
earth bastion of Fort Isiwa. The said escort consisted of sixty men,
under the command of a Sub-Inspector, beside whom Greenoak was riding.
With him was Dick Selmes. The latter now struck in--

"What's the row with Jacob--eh, Greenoak?"

"I don't know that I said anything was."

"No. But you'd got on that suspicious look of yours when you spoke of
him. I believe you're out of it this time. Now, I should say Jacob was
as good a chap as ever lived, even though he is as black as the ace of
spades. I've been yarning with him a heap."

"Have you? I think I'll follow your example then," returned Greenoak,
reining in his horse so as to bring it abreast of the foremost of the
ammunition waggons, ahead of which they had been riding.

The driver saluted. Though, as Dick Selmes had said, he was as black as
the ace of spades, he had an extremely pleasant face and manner.
Greenoak addressed him in the Xosa tongue, being tolerably sure that
none of the Police troopers within earshot possessed anything but the
merest smattering of that language, most of them not even that.
Further, to make assurance doubly sure, he talked "dark." The while,
Dick and Sub-Inspector Ladell also talked.

"Tell you what, Selmes," the latter was saying, "you're a regular Jonah.
You're always getting yourself into some hobble, and Greenoak seems
always to be getting you out of it. Now, I'll trouble you to mind your
P's and Q's while we're on this service, for we can spare neither time
nor men till we're through with it. It's an important one, I can tell
you, a dashed important one."

"Don't I know it?" answered Dick. "Didn't I take my full share of
getting the despatches through? I couldn't help it if that poor unlucky
idiot Stokes got drunk and killed."

"No, you certainly couldn't help that. But you're a Jonah, man. Yes,
decidedly a Jonah."

"A Jonah be hanged!" laughed the other, lightly. "Well, Greenoak, what
have you got out of Jacob Snyman?"

"Oh, nothing," was the casual reply. But though the speaker's face wore
its usual mask-like i