y'll say that you've taken my scalp and gone on home with it:
think it is just the fortune of war, and promise themselves that they'll
ride out by daylight to save my body from the Aasvogels and bury it out
of sight."

"And by degrees they will put that and that together," said West, "and
find that they have been thoroughly tricked."

"Yes, and poor Anson will distil pearly tears from those beautiful eyes
of his, and we shall not be there to see them rolling down his fat
cheeks. West, lad, I never yet wanted to kill a man."

"Of course not, and you don't now!"

"That's quite correct, lad; but I should like to be a grand inquisitor
sitting on Master Anson for his renegade ways and superintending in the
torture-chamber. My word, shouldn't he have the question of the water;
no, the rack; or better still, the extraction of his nails. Stop a
minute: I think hanging from the ceiling by his wrists with a weight
attached to his ankles, and a grand finish-off with the question of fire
would be more fitting. Bless him for a walking tallow sausage, wouldn't
he burn!"

"Ugh! Don't be such a savage!" cried West angrily. "You wouldn't do
anything of the kind. I should be far more hard-hearted and cruel than
you'd be, for I would have him tied up to the wheel of a wagon and set a
Kaffir to flog him with a sjambok on his bare back."

"Oh!" exclaimed Ingleborough sharply.

"What's the matter?"

"And I've come away without having the oily rascal stripped of his
plunder."

"What! His diamonds?"

"Yes. I know he has a regular pile hidden in that wagon of his, and,
what's more, I know where to look and find them."

"Where?"

"Never you mind till the time comes! I have a sort of prescient idea
that some day we shall face that fellow again with the circumstances
reversed; and then I'm going to have his loot cleared out."

And this and much more as the fugitives cantered easily along through
the darkness, giving their ponies their heads and letting them increase
the distance more and more, till all at once West broke the silence by
exclaiming: "I say, Ingle, is it really true?"

"Is what really true--that Master Anson's a fat beast?"

"No, no; that we have escaped and are riding away at full liberty to go
where we please? It seems to me like a dream, and that in the morning
we shall awake and find ourselves once again in that dreary wagon."

"Partly true, partly imaginary," said Ingleborough bluntly.

"What do