pression. The defiant one had utterly vanished. Colvin began
fumbling for a match wherewith to relight his pipe, which had gone out.
In reality he was thinking what there was about this girl which appealed
to him so strongly. She was not even pretty. Yet, standing there, tall
and graceful and fresh, in the early morning; a very soul of mind
looking out of her eyes with the enthusiasm born of a cherished subject,
she was more--she was marvellously attractive. The strange, lingering
feeling which her presence had left upon him the night before was
intensified here in the prosaic morning hour. What was it?

"There are patriots, however," he went on, "who are not always shining
angels of light. Listen now, and I'll tell you what happened to me
yesterday in that connection. Would you like to hear?"

"Of course I would."

Then he told her--told her everything, from the discovery of the
concealed arms to the suspicious non appearance of the man he had gone
to see; of Hans Vermaak's mysterious warning, and the subsequent ample
justification thereof--the narrow escape he and his servant had had for
their lives when fired upon murderously in the darkness by ambushed
assailants--up to the time of his arriving at Ratels Hoek, when she had
first seen him. Told her the whole story--her--this girl whom twelve
hours ago he had never seen--this girl only just out of her teens. Told
her, when as yet he had not told her father, a strong man of mature age,
and one of his most intimate friends. Why did he do it? He hardly knew
himself, unless it were that something in her personality appealed to
him as marking her out not merely from the rest of her sex, but from the
general ruck.

She listened attentively, absorbedly; her eyes fixed upon his face.

"Yes, that was bad," she said. "But then, you know, Mr Kershaw, as you
English say--there are black sheep in every flock, and the people back
there in the Wildschutsberg are a low class of Boer, very little removed
from _bijwoners_ [squatter labourers]. But"--as if she had said too
much and was trying to cover it--"do you not think they may have been
only wanting to frighten you; to play a joke on you?"

"It was a joke that cost me an uncommonly good mare," he answered. "The
poor brute was plugged through and rolled into the river. I dare say
she is half-way down to the sea by this time--as I and Gert would have
been but for, I suppose, Providence."

She was looking grave