resign, then?"

"Resigned! How can I be resigned? I'm a chunk of dynamite in a
suet-pot, hard to manage and ready to go off at any time that something
strikes me. Meantime, I am like what they say is dirt: matter out of
place."

"Then why don't you get out?" Weldon queried.

"I am out of place now, I'm telling you," Paddy returned, as he
pensively rested his cheek upon the bowl of the spoon in his hand.

"Yes; but why not refuse to stay here as cook?"

Sorrowfully Paddy shook his head, spoon and all.

"That's what I did do, little one."

"And what happened?"

"This." The spoon came into evidence once more. "They blarneyed me
up and they blarneyed me down, and they said nobody could cook like
Paddy. Anybody could shoot a baker's dozen of Boers; but only one
man in the camp could fill up the boys to give them a fit and level
stomach for the battle. And here I am, and here I'm like to be, till
the new moon in the heavens turns to a curly strip of bully beef. If
I'd known the Captain was about to escape to Cape Town, it's Paddy
that would have escaped with him, hanging on to the tail of his
coat. Saint Patrick's vipers! What's that?"

A hum, a spat, and a little spurt of red dust rolled lazily upward.
Then another hum followed. There was a scurry of men, a squeak of
leather, the light clashing of rifles snatched from the stack; and
the troops were off.

Beside them, the nearer hills rose in brick-red patches against the
sky. Farther away, the brick color changed to gray and, still
beyond, to misty purple. Before them rolled the open, khaki-colored
veldt dotted in one direction by a ragged spot of black that flowed
over the crest of each ridge and vanished from sight for a moment
before rising from the hollow to flow over the crest of the ridge
beyond. And towards the ragged spot of black there rushed onward, at
an ever-lessening distance, the khaki-colored streak of the foremost
rank of C Squadron, led for the moment by a little gray broncho
whose hoofs touched the ground only to spurn it backwards.

The chase was long and hot; but the end was in sight. Directly
across the path of the quarry stretched a low line of willows
showing the course of the stream beneath, and, a few hundred feet
this side of the willows, scattered clumps of green marked as many
scattered dwellings. By the largest clump, the quarry halted and
turned to bay, and the pursuers, unable to check their speed, rode
down upon it and crashed