ot-gun, and combined rifle and
smooth-bore, and a revolver. Going into an adjacent room where there
was no light, he lifted a corner of the blind and peered forth.

The moon had not quite risen, but it was light enough to see that in the
open space between the house and the quince hedge which railed off the
garden, several dark forms were standing. They were some fifty yards
off, and seemed to be making signs to others behind, probably hidden in
the deep shade of the hedge. It was also light enough to make out that,
tied round leg and arm, they wore tufts of cow-hair, and once the
peculiar rattle of assegai hafts, hardly audible, vibrated to the
horrified gazer's listening ear.

All the blood seemed to curdle back to Dick Selmes' heart. The warning
words of the store-keeper seemed to burn in letters of fire into his
brain. "There'll be hell let loose directly," Sampson had said. And
now Hazel was at the mercy--or would be--of these savage fiends, for
what could be done for long against the weight of numbers? He was back
in the kitchen. One solitary candle was burning dimly.

"Can you shoot, Elsie?" he whispered hurriedly, making as if to hand her
the shot-gun, which was loaded with Treble A. buckshot cartridges.

"Na, lad. A' can do better nor that. Do you do the shutin'."

She was rolling up her sleeves to the shoulders, displaying a pair of
arms that would have been useful to a navvy or a drayman. At her feet
lay a long-handled axe, rusty and blunt. This she now picked up,
swinging it a couple of times aloft, but with the thick side of the
head, not the edge, turned outwards.

"Yon'll nae be movin' as long as there's a light," she said. "They'll
be waiting until we're in bed, as they'll think, puir feckless loons.
We'll put it out the noo."

Dick was moved to intense admiration for the cool intrepidity of the
woman; at the art of generalship she displayed. Here, surely, was the
true fighting blood of some old Highland or Border clan. Even he seemed
to be taking a back seat. She put out the candle.

"Dinna shute till A' give ye the wurrd," she whispered.

The back door was in two parts. The upper one of these Elsie now
noiselessly set a little open, so as to convey the idea that in a
happy-go-lucky, careless, all-secure feeling, it had not been thought
necessary to shut it. Then she stood back from the doorway, of course
in black darkness, the axe, poised on high, held ready; its weight no
m