egs, notwithstanding which,
well knowing the desperate hardihood of the race, Renshaw deemed it
necessary to bind his hands. The other wounded man, a Kafir, had also a
broken leg. He, however, realising how thoroughly the odds were against
him, submitted sullenly to the inevitable. The sixth and last, he who
had led the gang, was stone dead, shot through the heart. Renshaw
turned the body over. The empty eye-socket and the brutal pock-marked
features seemed distorted in a fiend-like leer beneath the moonlight.
Renshaw had no difficulty in recognising the description of the Kafir,
Muntiwa.

Meanwhile, how had the non-combatants been faring? Mrs Selwood, having
armed herself with a double gun, had retired to her children's room,
resolved that her post was there. She had taken Violet with her, and
the latter had fallen into a fit of terror that was simply
uncontrollable. The crash of the firearms, the dread lull intervening,
the subdued anxious voices of the defenders, the terrible suspense, had
all been too much for her; nor could the reassurances of her hostess, or
even the example of pluck shown by the child Effie, avail to allay her
fears. Finally, she went off into a dead swoon.

As for the two youngsters, Fred and Basil, the prevailing idea in their
minds was one of unqualified disgust at not having been allowed to take
part in the fight from the very beginning.

"Why didn't you call us, Uncle Renshaw?" was their continual cry. "We'd
have knocked fits out of those _schelms_. Wouldn't we just!"

"You bloodthirsty young ruffians! You have plenty of time before you
for that sort of thing, and you'll have plenty of opportunities for
getting and giving hard knocks by the time you get to my age," he would
reply good-humouredly. But the youngsters only shook their heads with
expressions of the most intense disappointment and disgust.

Not much sleep for the household during the remainder of that night.
Renshaw found his time and his vigilance fully occupied in attending to
the security of his prisoners, and doing what he could for the wounded.
The fellows, for their part, were disposed to accept the inevitable, and
make the best of the situation. They were bound to be hanged anyhow,
though in his secret heart each man hoped that his life might be spared.
Meanwhile, it was better to enjoy good rations than bad ones, and to
that end it was as well to conciliate the _Baas_; and Renshaw had no
difficulty, acc