ld cry triumphantly, "that this Englishman
was not like other Englishmen?"

And Piet would laughingly agree.

Colvin himself did not fail to note the pride and delight wherewith she
would "produce" him--as he put it--to every fresh batch of people whose
acquaintance he made. Once or twice he took her to task for it.

"You know, darling," he would say, with a lurking amusement in his eyes,
"it is not `up to date' to show feeling. You ought, for instance, to
appear just languidly tolerant of my presence at all--rather as if I
were of no account in the world's scheme except to fetch and carry."

"Oh, ought I?" she would answer. "Well, when I see you want me to, I
will try and begin."

Those were happy days--for these two at any rate. For those outside the
enchanted portal they were days of dark anxiety; yet on the surface
little of this appeared. People came and went as usual. To judge from
the ordinary manner of Piet Plessis, no one would have suspected the
mind of that inscrutable official to be working and scheming to its
utmost capacity. He was a good deal away from home, returning late, or
not at all, and then with a cheerful breezy apology for the calls upon
his time entailed by a confoundedly serious political outlook. But he
had at once made Colvin free of the house, and the latter was grateful
for the quiet uninterrupted retreat thus afforded from the turmoil of
excitement and wild talk outside; and not the least happy hours were
those he spent in the cool, bosky garden, while Aletta sat at her work,
and talked to him, and they grew to know each other more and more, and
every day served but to deepen their mutual understanding, and love, and
appreciation. So the days wore on, and then from the bright, halcyon
blue, now constituting the lives of the twain, the bolt fell, and the
name thereof was written in but three letters--lurid letters traced in
blood--

War!

Yes, the storm had burst at last. The preliminary clouding over, the
flashes and mutterings, distant but drawing nearer, had culminated in a
great and terrible outburst, in the thunder roar of cannon along nearly
a thousand miles of border. The historical "ultimatum" had been
delivered. The land which but few years ago, comparatively speaking,
had been inhabited, and that hot too thickly, by a population of
primitive farmers, had thrown down the gauntlet in the face of the
valour and wealth and boundless resource of the Empire on which