re riding and
scouting than actual fighting. The man is made of some material that
draws all the bullets in sight."

Ethel smiled.

"Don't let him stop near you, then," she advised.

"Why not? He is as good as a shield. It is hard on him, though. He
was hit four or five times before Vlaakfontein, and has had one
scratch since."

"What is the trouble? Is he foolhardy?"

"Foolhardy in war, Miss Dent?"

"Yes, just that. There is no sense in taking needless risks."

"But it is mighty hard to draw the line between avoiding needless
risks and funking necessary ones," he answered. "But Carew isn't
reckless. He is plucky, but very level-headed, and he means to take
care of himself, when he can. One can't always, you know. And then
he is wonderfully unlucky."

"You believe in luck, then?"

"Yes, or Fate. What else makes a man move out of the way, just in
time for the bullet to graze his cheek? He doesn't see the bullet
coming; neither does the man who stops it. Both of them are busy
about something else. For the man who escapes it, it is Providence;
for the man who gets killed, it is Fate."

She tried to rouse him from his sudden gravity.

"And for both, it is mere chance."

"If you call it that. Miss Dent--" He hesitated.

"Yes," she assented gravely.

"It was only a chance, but a strange one," he went on, with his eyes
fixed on the topmost ridge of his brown puttie. "We were climbing
the face of a kopje, one day. It was very steep, and we crawled up a
narrow trail in single file. Two days before, our guns had been
shelling the whole kopje, and they must have cracked it up badly.
All at once, the man above me loosened a great lump of rock. I was
exactly underneath it. It gave a little bound outward, went
completely over me and struck full on the head of the next man in
line."

The girl sat, bending forward in her chair, her strong, quiet hands
clasped loosely in her lap.

"And he?" she asked quite low.

"He dropped to the foot of the kopje, dead. In his fall, he dragged
down the next man after him, and his leg was crushed."

"And you were saved!" she said a bit breathlessly.

"Doesn't it make you feel a vague responsibility, as if you must
live up to something that you couldn't quite understand?"

Without looking up, he bowed in assent.

"Yes," he said then. "Don't think me foolishly superstitious, Miss
Dent, or too egotistic. I try not to pay much attention to it. Once
in a while, though, not too