vent and the
width of its garden and tennis-ground being between them, continued to
sleep and snore peacefully and undisturbed.

Emigration Jane continued:

"Because that sly cat wiv the yeller 'air-plait won't 'ear o' you, you try
to git a pore servant-gal's fancy bloke pinched! Yah, greedy! Boo! You
plate-faced, erring-backed, s'rimp-eyed little silly, with your
love-letters an' messages! Wait till I give 'er another o' your
screevin'--that's all!"

"Patrol!" cried W. Keyse in a despairing whimper.

She advanced upon him closer and closer, lashing herself as she came, to
frenzy. How often had W. Keyse seen it outside the big gaudy pubs in the
Tottenham Court Road, and the Britannia, Camden Town! Perhaps the
recollection staring, newly awakened, in the pale, moonlit eyes of the
little perspiring Town Guardsman stung her to equal memory, and provoked
the act. Who can tell? We may only know that she plucked the weapon of
lower-class London from her hat, and jabbed at the pale face viciously,
and heard the victim say "Owch!" as he winced, and knew herself, as her
Slabberts gripped the rifle-barrel, and wrested it with iron strength from
the failing hands of W. Keyse, the equal of those dauntless Boer women who
killed men when it was necessary. But, oh! the 'orrible, 'ideous feeling
of 'aving stuck something into live flesh! Sick and giddy, the heroine
shut her eyes, seeing behind their lids wondrous phantasmagoria of
coloured pyrotechny, rivalling the most marvellous triumphs of the
magician Brock....

W. Keyse's beheld, at the moment when his weapon was wrenched from him,
two long grey arms come out of the darkness and coil about the
largely-looming form of Slabberts. Enveloped in the neutral-tinted
tentacles of this mysterious embrace, the big Boer struggled impotently,
and a quick, imperative voice said, between the thick pants of striving
men:

"Get the gun from him, will you, and call up your picket. Don't fire; blow
your whistle instead!"

"_Pip-ip-ip-'r'r! Pip-ip-r'r!_"

The long, shrill call brought armed men hurrying out of the darkness on
the other side of the Cemetery, and considerably quickened the arrival of
the visiting patrol.

"Communicating with persons outside the defences by flashlight signals. We
can't shoot him for it just yet, but we _can_ gaol him on suspicion,"
said the Commander of the picket. And Slabberts, with a stalwart escort of
B.S.A. troopers, reluctantly moved off in the