de him good-night.

Dick Selmes, left to himself, wandered out on to the stoep again, and
then, as if this did not leave him enough room to stretch his legs,
wandered out on to the grass below. He lit another pipe, and, his heart
all warm with thoughts of love and youth, proceeded to pace up and down.
His own company was congenial to him then. There was so much to let
his mind dwell upon, to go back to--and, better still, to look forward
to. So that it was not surprising that a full hour should have gone by
like a mere flash. Awaking from his reverie, he looked up and around.
The double glow which he and Hazel had noticed in the distance had died
down. But further round, and nearer now, two more of a similar
appearance were reddening the sky. What did it mean? His first
uncomfortable suspicions had been lulled, then forgotten. But now?
Grass fires were not wont to spring up from all points of the compass.
Dick Selmes stood still, staring at the distant redness. The sky was
becoming lighter now, but in a more gradual, more golden hue, precursor
of the rising moon.

Then he became aware of a movement of the front door, which he had left,
half open. Some one was standing there, clad in light garments, and
beckoning to him. He recognised the stalwart figure of Elsie McGunn.

"Ye'll be better inside, laddie," she whispered, flinging ceremony to
the winds in the importance of the moment. "A'm thinking there's that
going forward we'll be nae best pleased to see."

Dick sprang up the steps in a second.

"What's the row, Elsie?" he said.

"Hoot, mon, dinna speak that loud. A' hadn't done washing up in the
kitchen, and when A' turrned there was a black heathen sauvage
a-speerin' in at the window under the blind."

"We'll soon settle him," said Dick, making a move to start upon that
errand. But a strong--a very strong--detaining hand was upon his arm.

"Ye'll not leave the inside o' this hoose. Come in, laddie, and look
for yeerself. It's from inside ye're going to tak care o' Miss Hazel,
not from without, all stickit with the murdering spears of black
sauvages."

She drew him inside by main force, and noiselessly closed the door,
turning the key in the lock.

"Get ye the guns now," she said. "It's at the back they'll be wanted."

In this brief but very stirring experience, Dick Selmes had learned the
value of promptitude. In a minute he had joined Elsie in the kitchen.
He was loaded with a double sh