d his doings in spite of his
very decided repulse. As touching this last some men might have felt
rather small. Not so this one. A subtle, unerring instinct told him
that he had come out with all the honours of war.

"It is only the first step," he said to himself. "You were frightened
at first, my darling, but the time will come, and that sooner than you
think, when you shall kiss me back again, and that with all the sweet
ardour and passion wherewith I shall kiss you."

Then a very blank thought took hold upon his mind. What if all the
sympathy he had created in her was reflex--if whatever feeling she had
for him or would come to have was due solely to his complete likeness to
that other? Why the mere sight of Colvin, a chance glimpse in some
public place such as when they two had first met, might shatter his own
carefully calculated chances. It was a horrid thought--that at any
moment that unpalatable relative of his might appear and spoil
everything.

Not everything, at any rate. The greater scheme, apart from the
incidental one of love, would always remain untouched. Colvin, he had
already discovered, was in Pretoria. So far he was within the toils, or
at any rate within appreciable distance of so being.

"It will make the working out of it so much the easier," he said to
himself. "Great God alive! why should Colvin have all the good things
of earth? And the ungrateful dog isn't capable of appreciating them
either. Well, well, thanks to this benevolent war, his luck is now on
the turn, while mine--Oh, damn!"

The last aloud. A big powerful native, armed with a heavy stick,
swinging along the sidewalk at a run, utterly regardless of the bye-law
which rendered him liable to the gaoler's lash for being on the sidewalk
at all, had cannoned right against him. Quick as thought, and yielding
to the natural ire of the moment, Kenneth shot out his right fist,
landing the native well on the ear with a force that sent him
staggering. Recovering his balance, however, the fellow turned and
attacked him savagely. At the same time, two others who seemed to
spring out of nowhere--also armed with sticks--came at him from the
other side, uttering a ferocious hiss through the closed teeth.

Save for a walking-stick Kenneth was unarmed. In the existing state of
affairs the road was utterly lonely, and the odds against him were three
to one, three wiry desperate savages, armed with clubs, which they well
unders