direction of the
guard-house.

"Who was the fellow who helped you, do you know?" asked the officer who
had ridden up with the patrol. "Threw him and sat on him until the picket
came up, you say," he commented, on hearing W. Keyse's version of the
story. "A tall man in civilian clothes, with a dark wideawake and short
pointed beard! H'm!"

"Coming from the veld, apparently, and not from town," said the picket
Commander. "Must have known the countersign, or the sentries out there
would have stopped him. I--see!"

He looked at the patrol-officer, who coughed again. The moonlight was
quite bright enough for the exchange of a wink. Then:

"Hold on, man, you're bleeding," said W. Keyse's Sergeant, an old Naval
Brigade man. "How did ye get that 'ere nasty prod under the eye?"

W. Keyse put up his hand, and gingerly felt the place that hurt. His
fingers were red when they came away.

"The young woman wot was with the Dutchman, she jabbed me with a 'at-pin,
to git me to let 'im go."

"There's a blindin' vixen for you!" commented the Sergeant. "Two inch
higher, and she'd have doused your light out. Where did she come from,
d'ye know?"

"Have you any idea who she was?" asked the Commander of the picket.

W. Keyse shook his head.

"'Aven't the least idear, sir. Never sor 'er before in my natural!" he
declared stoutly.

"Well, you'll know her again when you meet her--or she will you," said the
patrol-officer, about to move on, when a deplorable figure came staggering
into the circle, and the rider reined up his horse. "What's this? Hey,
Johnny, where's your gun?"

It was W. Keyse's fellow-sentry from the opposite flank of the Convent.

"And time you turned up, I don't think," commented W. Keyse. "Didn't you
'ear me sing out to you just now?"

"Come, now, what were you up to?" the Sergeant pressed. "Better up an' own
it if you've bin asleep on guard."

The eager faces crowded round. The object of interest and comment, not at
all sympathetic or polite, was a stout, respectable tradesman, with a
large, round, ghastly face, who saluted his officer with a trembling hand.

"I--I have been the victim of an outrage, sir!"

"Sorry to hear it; what's your name?"

"Brooker, sir," volunteered W. Keyse's Corporal. "The other sentry we put
on with Keyse here."

"Mr. Brooker, sir, General Stores, Market Square," babbled the citizen.

"Well, Private Brooker, what have you to say?"

"I have been drugged or hypnotised, sir,