fast, and his eyes
glittered as he gazed; but there was nothing to see now save a beautiful
green clump of thorn bush, with the great grey granite block in its
midst.

"I make it two hundred and fifty yards good," he said to himself, and he
raised the sight of his rifle. "I ought to be able to hit a steady mark
at that distance when cool, and I feel as cool now as a cucumber.
They're grand shots these chaps, and if he can make out my face he'll
bring me down as sure as a gun; and if he does there's new mourning to
be got at home, and a lot of crying, and the old lady and the girls
breaking their hearts about stupid old me, so I must have first shot if
I can get it. Very stupid of them at home. They don't know what a fool
every one thinks me out here. Nice, though, all the same, and I like
'em--well, love 'em, say--love 'em all too well to let them go breaking
their hearts about me; so here goes, Mr Boer. But he doesn't go. He
must be waiting up there, because I saw his gun. What a while he is!
Or is it I'm impatient and think the time long? Couldn't have been
mistaken. I'd speak to old Lennox, but if I do it's a chance if the
enemy don't show and get first shot."

Dickenson seemed to cease thinking for a few moments, and lay listening
to the rattle of the Boers' guns across the river and the spattering
echo-like sounds of the bullets striking around. Then he began to think
again, with his eyes fixed upon the top of the grey stone in the
distance, and noting now that a clearly-cut shadow from a long strand
was cast right across the top of the stone.

"That's just in front of where his face ought to be when he takes aim,"
thought the young officer.--"Aim at me, to put them at home in mourning
and make them go to church the next Sunday and hear our old vicar say a
kind word for our gallant young friend who died out in the Transvaal.
But he sha'n't if I can help it. Nasty, sneaking, cowardly beggar! I
never did him any harm, and I don't want to do him any harm; but as he
means to shoot me dead, why, common-sense seems to say, `Have first shot
at him, Bobby, old chap, if you can, for you're only twenty, and as the
days of man are seventy years all told, he's going to do you out of
fifty, which would be a dead robbery, of course; and in this case a dead
robbery means murder into the bargain.'"

Bob Dickenson's musings stopped short for a few moments while he looked
in vain for some sign of his enemy. Then he