be in the Transvaal."

In substance the notices were alike, albeit somewhat different in
wording. Colvin reflected for a moment. Then he said:

"I suppose there's no mistake. It's rather sooner than I expected,
Kenneth, but of course I did expect it sooner or later. I am glad
enough for its emoluments, but personally I don't care about the title.
I fancy I shall grow awfully sick of hearing every cad call me by my
Christian name. I say, though, Kenneth, we shall be able now to make a
bigger thing of that scheme of ours, eh?"

"By Jove, you are a good chap, Colvin," burst forth the other,
understanding his meaning. But he did not let candour carry him far
enough to own to the daring scheme he had formed for personating Colvin
in the event of the fortune of war going against the latter, as it had
so nearly and fatally done. Like scruple, candour was not always a
paying commodity.

Colvin, for his part, was thinking with heartfelt gratitude and love,
what a bright future he had to lay before Aletta. Kenneth, for his, was
thinking, with a glow of satisfaction, that he was going to be very
happy with May Wenlock, under vastly improved circumstances, and that
such a state of things was, after all, much more satisfactory than life
on a far larger scale, but hampered with the recollection of a great
deed of villainy, and the daily chances of detection as a fraud and
impostor liable to the tender mercies of the criminal law.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

CONCLUSION.

Midnight.

The wind, singing in fitful puffs athwart the coarse grass belts which
spring from the stony side of ridge or kopje, alone breaks the dead
eerie silence, for the ordinary voices of the night, the cry of bird and
beast, are stilled. Wild animate Nature has no place here now. The
iron roar of the strife of man, the bellowing, crackling death message
from man to man, spouting from steel throats, has driven away all such.

Silent enough now are the bleak, stony hillsides, albeit the day through
they have been speaking, and their voice has been winged with death.
Silent enough, too, are the men crouching here in long rows, cool,
patient, alert; for on the success or failure of their strategy depends
triumph or disaster and death. Silent as they are, every faculty is
awake, ears open for the smallest sound, eyes strained through the far
gloom where lies the British camp.

Hour upon hour has gone by like this, but most of these are men who live