ismay and of warning which arose to the lips of the savage
died in his throat. The black, murderous shining ring of the muzzle
seemed to burn through him even as though already he felt the contents.
The countenance of his white adversary was terrific in its fell fury of
purpose, for it was the face of a thoroughly desperate man, balancing
unsteadily on the brink of that precipice, which is Death.

"One sound," whispered Roden, in Boer Dutch. "Only one sound!" and his
look supplied the rest.

Kaffirs are the most practical of mortals. This one was a thick-set and
sinewy savage, and were it a hand to hand tussle with his white
adversary in which muscular strength alone counted, would have stood
every chance. But the first movement would mean the pressure of that
deadly trigger, and a head blown to atoms. One shout would have brought
his countrymen swarming around him, and the white man would be cut to
ribbons in a moment. But that would not result in bringing himself back
to life, nor in piecing together again his own head, shattered to a
thousand fragments; wherefore he deemed it sound policy to lie still as
ordered.

But as he lay there, breathing hard and staring with protruding and
amazed eyeballs at the face of the man who threatened him, even the
terror of his position could not restrain a smothered gasp; for it was
the expression of a mighty astonishment. And his amaze communicated
itself to Roden, who by the fast increasing light, now recognised in the
countenance of this ferocious-looking and ochre-smeared warrior the
honest lineaments of the good-humoured and civil store-boy, Tom.

Yes, it was Tom; each had recognised the other now--Tom, who had come to
him like Nicodemus, by night, at the instigation of that unscrupulous
rascal Sonnenberg, to endeavour to entrap him into a flagrant violation
of the ammunition laws, by inducing him to sell the old gun--Tom who had
so deftly turned the tables afterwards upon his scoundrelly employer.
Well, he had a gun now, for there it lay beside the assegais, which had
escaped from his hand as he fell.

"I know you, Tom," he whispered in Dutch. "I won't harm you if you go
away and don't tell the others I'm here."

The Kaffir stared. "_Auf_!" he exclaimed; "let me go, _Baas_. I'll say
nothing."

Roden looked into the dark, ochre-smeared face. Even beneath this
hideous disguise it had an honest look.

"I trust you, Tom," he said. "Listen, I have not seen you