at moment.

"I'll go forward and make sure," he said thickly. "If--if--anything has
happened in there--it can't matter what happens to me, and--"

He rammed the spurs into his horse's flanks. But before he had shot
ahead fifty yards, a sight met his eyes--met the eyes of all of them--
which caused such a wild burst of relief that it could only find vent in
a ringing cheer.

Upon the stoep several figures were now standing, and prominent among
them the tall form of Dick Selmes. Harley Greenoak, whose feeling of
relief was certainly not inferior to that of the others, shook a
disapproving head.

"We want to bring this off quietly," he said. "We don't want to let the
whole Gaika nation know we're here, and that's about what all this
hullabaloo is likely to effect."

"It's all right, old chap. We'll give 'em fits if they give us the
chance," said one man, airily. Him Greenoak at once set down as a fool.

They galloped up to the house, and there was a vast amount of
handshaking and congratulation all round. Harley Greenoak held aloof.

"Who's on guard at the back, Dick?" he said drily, when he could get in
a word.

"At the back? Oh, we don't want a guard now, old chap," was the airy
response. "We've beat 'em off, made 'em run like so many curs. It was
the rockets did it, and the rockets were Mrs Waybridge's idea. But it
was Elsie who generalled the whole scrap. My hat, but you should have
seen her swinging that axe! She `downed' them one after another as hard
as they came in. It was fine strategy, I can tell you."

"And didn't A' tell ye that A'd mak ony sax o' yon heathen black
sauvages wish they'd never been born?" said the Scotswoman,
complacently. "And A' just stopped short at one."

"Well, you didn't give them time to wish they'd never been born, or
anything else," answered Dick.

"Ay, but they'll be wishin' it the noo, A'm thinking," was the dry
rejoinder, which, with its uncompromising Calvinism, evoked a great
laugh.

"Take care that Hazel doesn't go in there, Elsie," Dick managed to
whisper, referring to the kitchen, which had been the opening scene of
the drama, and where lay the four bodies of those first slain by that
intrepid Amazon.

The said bodies, however, were promptly dragged outside, and the sight
of these, together with those lying around the house, rendered it
unmistakably clear that a most gallant defence had been made. The while
the feminine side of the garrison was bu