g going on?"

"I for one!" said Ingleborough. "I'm getting quite used to it! But I
say, I can see a better way of making a fortune than keeping in the
diamond business."

"What is it?" said West carelessly. He was listening to the roar of the
enemy's guns and the crash of shells, for the Boers were keeping up
their bombardment right into the night.

"I mean to go into the gunpowder trade, and--oh dear, how--"

West waited for the words that should have followed a long-drawn yawn,
but none came, for the simple reason that Ingleborough was fast asleep.

Ten minutes later, in the face of his suggestions to the contrary, and
in spite of the steady regular discharge of artillery, sending huge
shells into the place, West was just as fast asleep, and dreaming of
Anson sitting gibbering at him as he played the part of a monkey filling
his cheeks with nuts till the pouches were bulged out as if he were
suffering from a very bad attack of mumps. The odd part of it was that
when he took out and tried to crack one of the nuts in his teeth he
could not, from the simple fact that they were diamonds.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.

BAD FOR ONE: GOOD FOR TWO.

"It's a bad job--a very bad job," said West, with a sigh, as he mounted
one of the pair of very excellent ponies that had been provided for the
despatch-riders by the gallant chief in command at Mafeking, with the
laughing comment that the two brave little animals ought to consider
themselves very lucky in being provided with two such masters, who would
take them right away from the beleaguered town, where, if they stayed,
their fate was bound to be that they would be minced into sausages or
boiled down into soup.

They were two beautiful little beasts; but West always sighed and said
it was a bad job whenever he mounted, for his heart was sore about the
pony he had lost before they entered Mafeking.

"I say, young fellow," said Ingleborough, with one of his grim smiles:
"how much longer are you going to stay in mourning?"

"Stay in mourning?" said West, staring, as he bent forward to pat his
mount's back.

"Yes: for those two ponies we lost; because it seems to me very absurd!
To begin with, it's downright folly to bemoan the loss of one pony when
you have been provided with another equally good; secondly, it is more
absurd to bemoan a pony at all; and thirdly, it is the most absurd thing
of all to be mourning for one that in all probability is not dead."

"Oh, the