out her, deepening to a basined valley in the middle
distances, sweeping to a rise beyond, so that the edges of the basin
looked down upon the town. High on the hill-ranges in the South more
chains of red sparks burned ... he knew them for the watch-fires of the
Boer outposts, and the raised edges of the basin East and West were set
thickly with similar twinkling jewels where the laagers were; while
smaller groups shone nearer, marking the situation of isolated vedettes.
The sickly taint upon the faint breeze told of massed and clustered
humanity. 'Strewth, how they stunk, the brutes! He hoped there was enough
of 'em, lying doggo up there, waiting the word to roll down and swallow
the blooming dorp! His palate grew dry, as the sweat broke out upon his
temples and trickled down the back of his neck, and the palms of his hands
were moist and clammy. Also, under the buckle of the Sam Browne belt was a
sinking, all-gone sensation excessively unpleasant to feel. Perhaps its
wearer had a touch of fever! Then the stout tradesman on the other side of
the Convent sneezed suddenly, and W. Keyse, with every nerve in his body
jarring from the shock, knew that he was simply suffering from funk.

Staggering from the shock of the horrible self-revelation, he gritted his
teeth. There was a Billy Keyse who was a blooming coward inside the other
who was not. He told the sickening, white-gilled little skulker what he
thought of him. He only wished--that is, one of him only wished--that a
gang of the Dutchies would come along now!

He drew a lurid picture for the benefit of the trembler, and when the
young soldier had fired into the brown of them and seen the whites of
their eyes, and fallen, pierced by a hundred wounds, in the successful
defence of the Convent, he was carried in, and laid on a sofa, and nobody
could recognise him, along of all the blood, until She came, with her
white little feet peeping from the hem of a snowy nightgown, and her
unbraided pigtail swamping the white with gold, and knew that it was her
lover, and knelt by the hero's side. Soft music from the Orchestra,
please! as with his final breath W. Keyse implores a last, first kiss.
Even as William No. 1 thrilled to the rapture of that imagined osculation,
Billy No. 2 experienced a ghastly fright.

For out of the enfolding velvety darkness ahead of him, and looking
towards those firefly sparks shining on the heights, came the sound of
stealthy measured footsteps and