hich had settled down upon his whole being. The
bloodshed and strife and massacre! of which he had been a witness, was
as a thing outside, a thing put completely behind.

It was decided that no move should be made that day. A bare suggestion
that they should attempt the return to Gandela revived all poor Lucy
Fullerton's terrors. She would sooner die at once, she declared, than
go through the horrors of yesterday all over again.

"Yes, you seemed to have got the funks to some considerable purpose,"
grumbled Fullerton. "Hang it, Lucy, I thought you had more pluck. Look
at Clare, now. She was positively enjoying it."

"Oh no, she wasn't," corrected that young person, who had just entered.
"No, not in the very least. But I suppose different people take on
different forms of scare. Mine took that of a sort of desperate
excitement."

"Yours? Form of scare! By jingo! that's a `form of scare' we could do
with plenty of during these jolly lively days," returned Fullerton.

"Oh, and look here, Dick," went on the girl. "I must ask you not to
talk about it--I mean not to go bragging around to everybody that your
sister-in-law shot twenty or forty or sixty Matabele--or whatever you
are going to make it--in the fight at the Kezane Store."

"Why in thunder not? Why shouldn't you have your share of the kudos as
well as anyone else in the same racket?"

"Because I don't want it. Because I want to forget my share in it. The
consciousness of having taken life, even in the very extremity of
self-defence, can never be a subject of self-congratulation, especially
to a woman. I, for one, don't want ever to hear it referred to."

"Well, you are squeamish, Clare. Let me tell you that the rest of us
don't share your opinions. There isn't a man jack, from Lamont
downwards, who hasn't been blowing your trumpet loud enough to wake the
dead."

A softer look came into her face at the name. Perhaps her
brother-in-law partially read it, perhaps he didn't.

"By the way, Dick," she went on, "I suppose by this time you have found
reason for somewhat altering your opinion of Mr Lamont's courage, have
you? It used to be rather unfavourable, if I remember right."

"Rather, I should think I had. I told him so too, during a lull in the
scrimmage."

"Oh, you told him so. And what did he answer?"

"Nothing. He sloshed a pistol-bullet into a big buck nigger who'd
romped up in the long grass to blaze into us. By George, here