e satisfactory arrangement and then get
away to the front at once, he vowed. In which resolution he met with
but lukewarm encouragement from his wife.

"You should just see the yarn that friend of Payne's wrote him about the
fight at Kreli's kraal, Ada," he remarked one day, having just ridden
in. "He says it was the greatest sport he ever had. Eh, Payne?"

That worthy, who had accompanied him, nodded oracularly--a nod which
might mean anything. Taught wisdom by the possession of a partner of
his own joys and sorrows, he was not going to put himself in active
opposition to what he termed the Feminine Controller-General's
Department. But he and Hoste had hatched out between them a little plan
which should leave them free, in a day or two, to start off in search of
the death or glory coveted by their martial souls.

The cottage which Hoste had taken for his family was a tiny pill-box of
a place on the outer fringe of the settlement, fronting upon the
_veldt_, which situation rendered the ladies a little nervous at night,
notwithstanding an elaborate system of outposts and pickets by which the
village was supposed to be protected. At such a time the presence of
Eanswyth, of whom they were very fond, was a perfect godsend to Mrs
Hoste and her daughters. The latter were nice, bright children of
fifteen and thirteen, respectively, and there were also two boys--then
away at a boarding school in Grahamstown. If Eanswyth ever had reason
to complain of the dullness or loneliness of her life on the farm, here
it was quite the reverse. Not only was the house so small that four
persons were sufficient to crowd it, but somebody or other, situated
like themselves, was always dropping in, sitting half the day chatting,
or gossiping about the progress of the war and the many rumours and
reports which were flying around. In fact, there was seldom a respite
from the "strife of tongues," for no sooner had one batch of visitors
departed than another would arrive, always in the most informal manner.
Now, of all this excess of sociability, Eanswyth was becoming a trifle
weary.

To begin with, she could obtain little or no privacy. Accustomed to
full measure of it in her daily life, she sorely missed it now. She
even began to realise that what she had taken as a matter of course--
what, indeed, some of her neighbours had half commiserated her for--was
a luxury, and, like other articles falling under that category, a thing
to be