st up to Gueldersdorp, under
convoy of an escort of B.S.A. Police. To the non-commissioned officer in
command Smoots Beste, resigned to the discharge of a trust, handed the
letter for the Civil Commissioner.

The sergeant, sitting easily in the saddle, looked at the boldly-written
direction on the envelope, and smelt no rats--at least until he coolly
opened the supposed letter. The scrawled sheet of paper it contained was a
surprise, but he did not let Smoots see that. Then the following brief
dialogue took place:

"You were trekking up to Gueldersdorp," he said to the decidedly nervous
Smoots, "to fetch down a Deputy Civil Commissioner to deal with the
effects of a dead English traveller, at a house kept by the man who wrote
this letter--that is, three days' trek over the veld to the southward, and
called the Free State Hotel?"

Smoots nodded heavily. The dapper sergeant cocked his felt smasher hat,
and turned between pleasantly smiling lips the cigar he was smoking. Then
he pointed with his riding-whip, a neatly varnished sjambok, with a smart
silver top, to the north-west.

"There lies Gueldersdorp. Rum that when the lightning killed the ox-team
you should have been trekking north-east, isn't it?"

Smoots Beste agreed that it was decidedly rum.

The sergeant said, without a change in his agreeable smile:

"All right; you can inspan six of our drove-bullocks, and drive the waggon
with us to Gueldersdorp."

"Thank you, Baas!" said Smoots, without enthusiasm.

"If you like to take the risk," added the sergeant, who had not quite
finished. He ended with an irrepressible outburst of honest indignation:
"Why, you blasted, thieving Dutch scum, do you think I don't _know_ you
were stealing that span and waggon?"

And as Smoots, sweating freely, unyoked the dead oxen, he decided in his
heavy mind that he would be missing long before the convoy got to
Gueldersdorp.

Nine waggons rolled on where only eight had been before. The mounted men
hurried on the daubed and wearied droves of Commissariat beasts. Smoots
Beste drove the scratch team of bullocks, but his heart was as water
within his belly, and there was no resonance in the smack of his whip.
When the convoy came to a town, he vanished, and the story thenceforth
knows him no more. The discreet sergeant of police did not even notice
that he was missing until several days later, when the end of the journey
was near at hand. He was a sober, careful man, and a good