ore tax on her brawny arms than if it had been a quince switch.

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR.

MRS WAYBRIDGE HAS AN IDEA.

Dick Selmes, who had intuitively grasped the simplicity of the tactics
to be observed, was at the back of the room; not quite opposite the
doorway, lest the light from without should fall upon him. The minutes
of waiting were tense beyond the critical moment of any adventure which
had come his way yet. And it was a time of waiting. The savages would
allow time, after the removal of the light, for the occupants to retire.
It would be so much easier to wreak their deed of red murder upon the
slumbering and unsuspecting, and this he realised. But his pulses were
throbbing, and it seemed that his own heart-beats must be audible to
those outside. Then he pulled himself together. A grim, satirical
impulse to laughter was upon him as he thought what a deadly surprise
was in store for them, and cautiously he fingered the ammunition in his
pockets so as to guard against the possibility of losing precious time
in trying to jam the wrong cartridges into the wrong gun. Ha! Now for
it!

For the upper half of the door was slowly opening. A dark head and
shoulders were framed within the square of comparative light from
outside, then the watcher could make out that their owner was bending
over to try and undo the inner fastenings of the lower half of the door.
The head was well within the room; why didn't the axe descend upon it?
But Elsie McGunn had laid her plans deeper than that.

The Kafir turned, and seemed to be signalling back to his fellows; then
giving his attention to his own work, he straddled the lower half of the
door and was within the room. But before he had time even to stand
upright he fell like a log. For the axe-head had descended, catching
him with a horrid crunch just where the skull joined on to the back of
the neck. Not a groan, not a struggle. The chief, Sandili, had lost
one fighting man, and that at the hand of a woman.

Silence again. Now another dark form filled the square, and the same
inward move began, only the new-comer did not imitate his predecessor in
striving to undo any fastenings. He was a gigantic, grease-smeared
beast, and Dick Selmes could make out a glint of moonlight upon white
eyeball, and a glisten on assegai blades, held in the dark cruel hand,
as he made the effort of clambering over. Then the downward sweep, and
crunch of the weighty iron, and this o