the poor fellow
must be in pain, for each time there was a sharp wincing, accompanied by
a deep sigh, which resulted in the touch being laid on more lightly. It
was only to satisfy himself in the darkness that his comrade was
sleeping and not sinking into some horrible state of lethargy; and
finding at last that there was no apparent need for his anxiety, the
watcher directed his attention to listening for sounds out upon the
veldt, and divided the time by making surmises as to the experiences
through which Lennox must have passed.

Captured and escaped! That was the conclusion to which he always came,
and he wished that Lennox would wake up and enliven the tedium of the
dark watch by relating all that he had gone through.

The lion made itself heard again and again, but at greater distances;
and the prowling jackals and hyenas seemed to follow, for their cries
grew fainter and fainter and then died out into the solemn silence of
the veldt, which somehow appeared to the listener as if it were
connected with an intense feeling of cold.

Then all at once, as Dickenson turned himself wearily and in pain from
the crushing he had received when the stone slipped, he became conscious
of something dark close by, and his hand went involuntarily to his
revolver.

The next minute he realised that what he saw was not darker, but the sky
behind it lighter, and he sprang to his feet.

"You, sergeant?" he said.

"Yes, sir," was whispered back. "Be careful; one never knows who may be
near. The light's coming fast."

Coming so fast that at the end of a quarter of an hour Dickenson could
dimly make out the steep kopje by Groenfontein away to his left, and the
low, hill-like laager that they had destroyed twenty-four hours before
low down on the opposite horizon.

"Why, sergeant," he whispered eagerly, "if we had started again in the
dark we should have gone right off to where the Boers might have been."

"Yes, sir, and away from home. That's the worst of being in the dark."

"As soon as it's a little lighter," whispered Dickenson, "we had better
carefully examine this place. It is quite possible that there may be a
patrol of the enemy occupying it, as we have done."

"Yes, sir, likely as not, for--"

The sergeant clapped his hand over his lips and dropped down upon his
knees, snatching at his officer's jacket to make him follow his example.

There was need enough, for all at once there was something loudly
uttered i