e are all liable
to make mistakes, and I, for one, am the first to own it. And now the
first thing to do is to organise a defence committee, and set to work
with a will."

Then, as the hotel-keeper returned, Lamont started to narrate all that
had befallen, the attack on Peters, then on the homestead, and how they
had stood off the savages until night.

"They must have found dynamite while looting," he said, "for soon after
we'd left we heard the devil of an explosion."

He continued his narrative shortly and succinctly. When he got to the
massacre of the Tewsons, his listeners grew white with horror.

"Yes. We saw what we don't want to see again, and would like to forget
we ever had seen. And now we'd better get hold of the best men here,
Orwell, and fix up a plan. Jennings and Fullerton, and some of the
others."

"Fullerton's not here," said Orwell. "He started for Buluwayo only this
morning with his wife and sister. Wyndham's driving them--"

"WHAT?"

It was Lamont who had spoken--shouted, rather. And in truth the
interruption was startling. He who made it was leaning forward over the
table, his dark face without a vestige of colour, his eyes staring as
though already they beheld a reproduction of the grim horror upon which
they had so recently gazed, only, in this case--

"Yes. But they had an escort," explained Orwell wonderingly. "Isard
sent some police with them."

"Some police! How many?" in a dry staccato tone.

"Oh, a dozen, he told me. Some of his best men--"

"Come on, Peters," shouted Lamont, springing to his feet and not waiting
to hear any more. "We've got our work cut out for us, and we'll get at
it at once. An escort--a dozen police--and the whole country up in a
blaze! Foster, let me have the best horse you've got in your stables
for Peters--you shall name your own price. Now then, who'll volunteer?"
going out into the bar, where several men had already collected. It had
got about somehow that something was in the wind, and more and more were
rolling up at Foster's to see what they could find out. "Who'll
volunteer? Fullerton's been idiot enough to start his womenkind off for
Buluwayo this morning. They'll be at the Kezane Store by the time we
catch them up, and we saw with our own eyes an impi, a couple of hundred
strong, heading straight for that very point this morning. The whole
country's in a blaze. My farm's been blown up, and Tewson and his
family are all murd