hose very
number they were ignorant. So they wriggled away as swiftly and
noiselessly as so many snakes, not, however, entirely without loss.

"Hallo. Who's down?" cried Hyland Thornhill, coming up to the group
standing around the two. "Eh? Who the blazes is down?"

They made way for him in silence.

"Oh, good God!" he cried, staggering to the ground beside the wounded
man. "He isn't killed--no damn it--he isn't killed," gritting his
teeth. "Oh, dear old dad--tell me you know me, for God's sake."

A wave of returning consciousness swept over the face of the wounded
man. He opened his eyes, and there was a gleam of recognition in them.
Then he closed them, knitting his brows as though in pain.

Thus Hyland Thornhill succeeded in rescuing his father--but--was it too
late?

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO.

THORNHILL'S STORY.

"Will you go in and see him, Evelyn? No, it's not you Edala. He wants
to talk to Evelyn this time."

Hyland had just come from his father's sick room. Both girls, awaiting
the summons, had started up. Some days had passed since the rescue
party had returned to Kwabulazi, but the wounded man did not seem to
improve. The doctor feared lest erysipelas might set in, it was even
possible that the patient might lose his sight, for the wound had
perforce been dressed in rough and ready fashion at the time--indeed but
that they had put their best foot foremost in the retreat they would
have been attacked by a force whose overwhelming strength would have
rendered massacre almost a certainty. As it was they were pressed hard
to within a mile of the entrenchments; but some at any rate among the
savages had had experience in trying to rush that very entrenchment, and
had no stomach for a repetition thereof. So the impi had drawn off.

To her dying day Edala will never forget the return of that rescue
party--and the lifting down of her father's half--unconscious form from
the horse on which Hyland had supported him--the deathly pallor of the
drawn face, the beard all clotted with dried blood, the hands limp and
nerveless. So utterly did she give way, in the plenitude of her grief
and gnawing remorse that several of the men had to turn away with a
suspicious choke.

"Too late! Too late!" she moaned, throwing herself on the ground beside
him. "You said it would be, and it is."

"But it isn't," struck in Hyland. "He's got a bad knock on the head,
but old Vine'll be able to put that right. Co