rose before his mental light in that crucial
moment. Not the face of her for whom yonder man now about to meet a
bloody death had betrayed him--but another and a purer vision swept his
brain, and it was as the face of an angel from Heaven, for it was that
of Lyn. Hilary Blachland triumphed.

Turning his steed with a mighty wrench, he rode straight back to the
unhorsed trooper. From the ranks of the charging savages, now near
enough to recognise him, there arose a mighty roar.

"Isipau! Ha! Isipau!"

"Quick, Spence! Get up behind me. Quick!"

The other needed no second bidding. As the horse with its double
burden--either of these, singly, would have been a sufficient one for
the poor brute, blown as he was--started once more, the foremost line of
the savages was barely two hundred yards distant. Leaping, bounding,
uttering their blood-curdling war-hiss, they reckoned their prey secure.
The horse, weighted like that could never distance them. They would
overtake it long before camp should be reached. Already they gripped
their assegais.

"Sit tight, Spence, or you'll pull us both to the ground," said Hilary,
with a sardonic suspicion that if the other saw a chance of throwing him
off without risking a similar fate himself, he was quite mean enough to
seize it. "Sit light too, if you can, and spare the horse as much as
possible."

Down into a hollow, and here, in the bed of a dry watercourse, the game
steed stumbled heavily, but just saved his footing, and thereby the
lives of his two riders. Bullets flew humming past now, but it seemed
that the din of their pursuers was further behind, and indeed such was
the case, for they arrived at the laager at the same time as the rescued
troop horses.

"Good God! Blachland! You are a splendid fellow, and I owe you my
life," gasped the rescued man. "But what must you think of me?" he
added shamefacedly.

"No more no less than I did before," was the curt reply. "Get off now.
You're quite safe."

"You ought to get the V.C. for this," went on Spence.

But the other replied by coupling that ardently coveted decoration with
a word of a condemnatory character. "I believe I've nearly killed my
horse," he added crustily.

There were those in the laager who witnessed this, and to whom the
circumstances of the former acquaintanceship between the two men were
known--but they tactfully refrained from making any comment. Percival
West, however, was not so reticen