he could use it. A blow on the head with a kerrie--a whack which
would have floored a weaker man--he parenthesised grimly and with
ill-concealed pride--having failed to knock him off his horse, the
savages endeavoured to stab him with their assegais--and in fact had
wounded him in several places. Fortunately for him they had not
succeeded in seizing his bridle, or at any rate in retaining hold of it,
or his doom would have been sealed.

"The chap who tried it on dropped under my stirrup-iron," explained
Carhayes. "I `downed' him, by the living Jingo! He'll never kick
again, I do believe. That scoundrel Nteya promised I shouldn't be
molested, the living dog! There he was, the old _schelm_, he and our
friend of to-day, Hlangani--and Matanzima, old Sandili's son, and
Sivulele, and a lot of them, haranguing the rest. They mean war. There
couldn't have been less than six or seven hundred of them--all holding a
big war-dance, got up in their feathers and fal-lals. What do you think
of that, Eustace? And in I went bang into the very thick of them."

"I knew it would come to this one of these days, Tom," said Eanswyth,
who now reappeared with the necessary refreshment, and water and towels
for dressing his wounds.

"Of course you did," retorted her husband, with a savage snarl. "You
wouldn't be a woman if you didn't, my dear. `I told you so,' `I _told_
you so,'--isn't that a woman's invariable parrot cry. Instead of
`telling me so,' suppose you set to work and see what you can do for a
fellow. Eh?"

Eustace turned away to conceal the white fury that was blasting him.
Why had the Kafirs done things by halves? Why had they not completed
their work and rid the earth of a coarse-minded brute who simply
encumbered it. From that moment he hated his cousin with a secret and
bitter hatred. And this was the life that stood between him and--
Paradise.

Tom Carhayes was indeed in a vile humour--not on account of the wounds
he had received, ugly as some of them were; for he was not lacking in
brute courage or endurance. But his wrath burnt hot against the
insolent daring of his assailants, who had presumed to attack him, who
had, moreover, done so treacherously, had robbed him of his gun, as well
as of a number of sheep, and had added insult to injury by laughing in
his face when he asked for redress.

"I'll be even with them. I will, by the living Jingo!" he snarled as he
sat sipping his brandy and water--while