the prospect of coming to grips.

"Anna puckered her brows. 'It is not the way to fight,' she
said doubtfully. 'A bush and a rifle and a range of six
hundred yards is what beat the Basutos.'

"'Pooh!' laughed the young Burgher. 'You say that because
your husband shoots so well, and you want him to be marked
for good fighting.'

"She frowned a little, inwardly accusing herself of this
same meaning. She would gladly have put these thoughts from
her, for brave folk, whether men or women, have commonly
but one face, and she hated to show friendship to her
husband and harbor distrust of him in her bosom. When the
young Burgher at last rode away, galloping uselessly to
seem what he wished to be--a wild person of sudden habits--
she sat on the stoop for a while and thought deeply. And
she sighed, as though pondering brought her no decision,
and went once more about her work, always with an eye
cocked to the window to watch for any rider coming back
from the laager with news of affairs.

"But there was a shyness on both sides for a week. The
Kafirs had not yet ripened their minds to an attack on the
hills, nor had the Burghers quite sloughed their custom of
orderliness and respect for human life. There was a little
shooting, mostly at the landscape, by those whose trigger-
fingers itched; but at last a man coming back with a hole
in his shoulder to be doctored and admired halted at the
door and told of a fight.

"He sat in a long chair and told about the pain in his
shoulder, and opened his shirt to show the wound. Anna
leaned against the door-post and heard him. Outside his
brown pony was rattling the rings of the bit and switching
at flies, and she perceived the faint smell of the sweat-
stained saddlery and the horse-odour she knew so well.
Before her, the tall grimy man, with bandages looped about
him, his pleasant face a little yellow from the loss of
blood, babbled boastfully. It was a scene she was familiar
with, for of old on the Free State border the Burghers and
the Basutos were forever jostling one another, and--I told
you her father was a commandant!

"'But tell me about the battle,' she urged.

"'Allemachtag!' exclaimed the wounded man. 'But that was a
fight! It was night, you know, about an hour after the
dying of the moon, and there was a spit of rain and some
little wind. The commandant was very wakeful, I can tell
you, and he had us all out from under the wagons, though it
was very cold, and se