licity
of her dark-blue gown.

She found the attendant who had given her the letter, and asked if the
messenger was waiting, and was only then informed that he had been gone
three hours or more.

Three hours or more! It might be that Rudyard was gone forever without
hearing what she had to say, or knowing whether she desired
reconciliation and peace.

She at once gave orders for a cape-cart to take her over to Brinkwort's
Farm. The attendant respectfully said that he must have orders. She
hastened to the officer in charge of the hospital, and explained. His
sympathy translated itself into instant action. Fortunately there was a
cart at the door. In a moment she was ready, and the cart sped away
into the night across the veld.

She had noticed nothing as she mounted the cart--neither the driver nor
the horses; but, as they hurried on, she was roused by a familiar voice
saying, "'E done it all right at Hetmeyer's Kopje--done it brown. First
Wortmann's Drift, and then Hetmeyer's Kopje, and he'll be over the
hills and through the Boers and into Lordkop with the rest of the
hold-me-backs."

She recognized him--the first person who had spoken to her of her
husband on her arrival, the cheerful Corporal Shorter, who had told her
of Wortmann's Drift and the saving of "Old Gunter."

She touched his arm gently. "I am glad it is you," she said in a low
tone.

"Not so glad as I am," he answered. "It's a purple shame that you
should ha' been took sick when he was mowed down, and that some one
else should be healin' 'is gapin' wounds besides 'is lawful wife, and
'er a rifle-shot away! It's a fair shame, that's wot it is. But all's
well as ends well, and you're together at the finish."

She shrank from his last words. Her heart seemed to contract; it hurt
her as though it was being crushed in a vise. She was used to that pain
now. She had felt it--ah, how many times since the night she found
Adrian Fellowes' white rose on her pillow, laid there by the man she
had sworn at the altar to love, honor, and obey! Her head drooped. "At
the finish"--how strange and new and terrible it was! The world stood
still for her.

"You'll go together to Lordkop, I expeck," she heard her companion's
voice say, and at first she did not realize its meaning; then slowly it
came to her. "At the finish" in his words meant the raising of the
siege of Lordkop, it meant rescue, victory, restoration. He had not
said that Rudyard was dead, that the Bo