m if he shows
you a wrong road."

_I. O._ "He will know all that we want him to know."

_D._ "Where will you want him to take you? I know he doesn't know the
way."

_I. O._ "Why, he has only to go to Britstown!"

_D._ (_the tears drying_) "And you promise me that you will not harm
him?"

_I. O._ "Of course I won't."

_D._ "Oh, thank you." She was gone, and the Intelligence officer was
left to his own thoughts. It had slipped out unawares. He had been
caught: he realised that much as soon as the word had left his lips.
He had yet much to learn.

There was a noise in the verandah. The Tiger had arrived with
Stephanus, four ponies, and three native boys.

"This will do for a start, sir; we will amplify on the march!"

But as the Intelligence officer handed over his department to the
quarter-guard of the 20th Dragoon Guards for safe keeping until the
morrow, Miss Pretorius was saddling a pony in the kraal. She had to
find her father before daybreak. Her father with his two sons was at
Nieuwjaarsfontein!

* * * * *

Richmond Road is not a township. It is only a railway-station, but it
boasts of one _winkel_[11] adjoining the railway buildings. Here the
O.C. of the New Cavalry Brigade had taken up his quarters for the
night, and here the Jew proprietor had arranged food and lodging for
the staff. Part barn, part shop, and part dwelling, this dilapidated
hostelry is typical of its kind. You meet with them all over the South
African veldt. You bless them when they shelter you from the wind and
rain; curse them when, housed in a six-storeyed mansion, which boasts
the same legend over the door--hotel--you remember to what you were at
one time reduced by the chances of a soldier's life.

The brigadier was just sitting down to the only meal that the
slatternly wife of the Jew could produce--a steaming mess of lean
boiled mutton--when the Intelligence officer returned from his
adventure.

"Come and sit down, Mr Intelligence; have you raised a band of robbers
yet?"

"Yes, sir; I've collected a trooper of Rimington's Guides and some
boys."

"You seem a brighter fellow than I took you for. Well, here you are;
here is another telegram for you. We ought to come right on the top of
the swine to-morrow."

_To Intelligence N.C.B. from Int. De Aar._

"Gathering of rebels at Nieuwjaarsfontein confirmed from two
sources. Repeated, &c."

The Intelligence officer kept his own