shaken
her uncle's arm, for, instead of killing Hans, as it undoubtedly would
have done, the bullet only cut his ear and then passed out through the
open window-place. In an instant the room was filled with smoke. Hans
Coetzee clapped his hand to his head, uttering yells of pain and terror,
and in the confusion that ensued three or four men, headed by the Kafir
Hendrik, rushed into the room and sprang upon Silas Croft, who had
retreated to the wall and was standing with his back against it, his
rifle, which he had clubbed in both his hands, raised above his head.

When his assailants were close to him they hesitated, for, aged and bent
as he was, the old man looked dangerous. He stood there like a wounded
lion, and swung the rifle-stock about. Presently one of the men struck
at him and missed him, but before he could retreat Silas brought down
the stock of the rifle on his head, and down he went like an ox beneath
a poleaxe. Then they closed on him, but for a while he kept them
off, knocking down another man in his efforts. At that moment the
witch-doctor Hendrik, who had been watching his opportunity, brought
down the barrel of his old fowling-piece upon Silas's bald head and
felled him. Fortunately the blow was not a very heavy one, or it would
have broken his skull. As it was, it only cut his scalp open and knocked
him down. Thereon, the whole mass of Boers, with the exception of
Muller, who stood watching, seeing that he was now defenceless,
fell upon Silas, and would have kicked him to death had not Bessie
precipitated herself upon him with a cry, and thrown her arms about his
body to protect him.

Then Frank Muller interfered, fearing lest she should be hurt. Plunging
into the fray with a curse, he exercised his great strength, throwing
the men this way and that like ninepins, and finally dragging Silas to
his feet again.

"Come!" he shouted, "take him out of this;" and accordingly, with
taunts, curses and obloquy, the poor old man, whose fringe of white
locks was red with blood, was kicked and pushed on to the verandah, then
off it on to the drive. Here he fell over the body of the murdered Kafir
boy, but finally he was dragged to the open space by the flagstaff, on
which the Union Jack that he had hoisted there some two months before
still waved bravely in the breeze. There he sank down upon the grass,
his back against the flagstaff, and asked faintly for some water.
Bessie, who was weeping bitterly, and who