rtyard, the fourth
constituting the gaoler's quarters and the kitchen where the prisoners'
rations were prepared. A line of men in broad-arrow stamped suits, all
natives, guarded by two armed constables, was filing in from the veldt.
This was the hard-labour gang, returning to the most congenial task in
the whole twenty-four hours, the consumption of dinner, to wit; to-day
combined with a scarcely less attractive one, to those figuring in it
only as spectators--punishment parade.

The convicts, after the regulation search, were drawn up in a line in
the prison yard. A long ladder standing against the wall did duty as
the triangles. There was another to suffer besides Gonjana, a
yellow-skinned Hottentot named Bruintjes, and for a similar offence.
Half beside himself with fear, this fellow stood, shivering and moaning,
with quaking, disjointed appeals for mercy. The Kaffir, on the other
hand, might have been one of the spectators, for all the sign he gave to
the contrary; though now and again his tongue would go up to the roof of
his month in a disdainful "click," as he watched the contortions of his
fellow-sufferer.

"Which shall I take first, sir?" said the gaoler.

"Oh, the Hottentot," answered Mr Van Stolz. "The poor devil will be
dead if he has to wait for the other chap. He isn't quite so cheeky now
as he was in Court. Seems to be taken out of him. Ready, doctor?"

The district surgeon, whose presence on such occasions was required by
law, replied in the affirmative, and the Hottentot, stripped to the
waist, was triced to the ladder. With the first "swish" of the lash,
which the gaoler, an old soldier, understood the use of, he set up a
screech like a cat in a steel trap; and this he kept up throughout. At
the end he was untied, whimpering and howling, and his back sponged.

"Pah! Twenty-five lashes!" growled the gaoler, running his fingers
through the strings of his "cat." "A soldier would have taken it
grinning, in my time."

Then Gonjana was triced up. But he was made of very different
stuff. A slight involuntary quiver in the muscles of the brawny
chocolate-coloured back as the lash cut its terrible criss-cross, but
that was all. Not a sound escaped the throat of the sturdy barbarian,
not even a wriggle ran through his finely-modelled limbs from first to
last. It was like flogging a bronze statue.

"By Jove, he took that well!" exclaimed Roden, moved to admiration.

The Kaffir, who had u