talk and banter with its
occupants, and he was doing it with an object. Hazel had shown
wonderful pluck during the stirring events of the night, but the ghastly
sights she had witnessed, and the terror she had undergone, would be
likely to come back to her now in the reaction of feeling safe, and he
wanted her to forget them. So he rattled on, keeping their attention
turned in a more salutary direction; whereby shows out another side of
that missing link which the girl had decided had been supplied. He had
learnt to think.

The following day, and for days after, all manner of scare rumours kept
coming in, of homesteads burnt, of such inmates as were unable to escape
in time surprised and massacred, of stock swept away, and crops
destroyed. And then the savages began to watch the main road, to cut
off express-riders, or small parties; indeed, it was not long before
they waxed bolder, and news came of a fierce attack upon several
companies of a regiment of foot, on its march to the Komgha. To make
things worse, the so-called "conquered" paramount tribe swarmed back
into Gcalekaland again, joining hands with the now revolted Gaika clans
within the Colonial border. Thus the war, officially declared to be
over, had, in actual fact, only just begun.

A few nights after its plucky defence, Waybridge's homestead went the
way of the rest, but not before he had managed, with the aid of a few
daring spirits, to make a dash out there and bring away some of the more
portable effects, and to bury, or otherwise hide, others. But he did
not complain. The marvellous escape of his household, where others had
died cruel deaths, alone precluded that. In other ways, too, he had
been lucky, in that for some time past he had gradually been selling off
most of his stock, so that his loss was comparatively small.

As the days went by Dick Selmes began to look with wistful eyes at this
or that commando passing through, or at this or that patrol starting to
reconnoitre the countryside or keep the road open. Hazel, reading what
was in his mind, was furtively watching him. One day, when they were
alone together, she said--

"Dick, my darling. You are eating your heart out because you want to go
off again to this wretched war, and perhaps get killed. You are not
content to stay and take care of poor little me."

She had grown wondrously tender towards him since the night of peril
they had shared, in pursuance whereof she had laid a