its.
I have said there was a stove burning in the caravan. As soon, then, as
Jenny found out that they were fortifying or entrenching the camp, and
that the Philistines, as she called them, might be expected at any moment,
she awoke to a true sense of the situation. The first thing she did was to
replenish the fire, then she put the biggest saucepan on top of the stove,
and as soon as it commenced to boil she began 'mealing in,' as she called
it.

'Oatmeal would have been best,' she told my aunt; 'but, after a',' she
added, 'Indian meal, though it be but feckless stuff, is the kind o' kail
they blackamoors are maist used to.'

Aunt wondered what she meant, but was silent, and, indeed, she had other
things to think about than Jenny and her strange doings, for Aileen
required all her attention.

[Illustration: 'Ye can Claw the Pat']

When, however, the fight had reached its very fiercest, when the camp
itself was enveloped in smoke, and the constant cracking of revolvers, the
shrieks of the wounded men and clashing of weapons would have daunted a
less bold heart than Jenny's--the old lady took her saucepan from the
stove and stationed herself by the front door of the caravan. She had not
long to wait. Three of the fiercest of the Indian warriors had sprung to
the _coupe_ and were half up,

'But little kenned they Jenny's mettle,
Or dreamt what lay in Jenny's kettle.'

With eyes that seemed to flash living fire, her grey hair streaming over
her shoulders, she must have looked a perfect fury as she rushed out and
deluged the up-turned faces and shoulders of the savages with the boiling
mess. They dropped yelling to the ground, and Jenny at once turned her
attention to the back door of the van, where already one of the leading
Gaucho malos--aunt's beautiful blackguards of the day before--had gained
footing. This villain she fairly bonneted with the saucepan.

'Your brithers have gotten the big half o' the kail,' she cried, 'and ye
can claw the pat.'

It was not till next evening that aunt told Moncrieff the brave part old
Jenny had played. He smiled in his quiet way as he patted his mother's
hand.

'Just as I told ye, Miss M'Crimman,' he said; 'mither's a ma_rrr_vel!'

But where had the bold Bombazo been during the conflict? Sword and
revolver in hand, in the foremost ranks, and wherever the battle raged the
fiercest? Nay, reader, nay. The stern truth remains to be told. During all