d been pulled down from
the very first. No--he could not have gone far, and when they did find
him, why then a long reckoning would have to be paid for the guns
supplied to the enemies of the King.

Like hounds they quartered the ground in every direction. No sign of
their quest. Then the bush line was entered. Here they would have him.
He could not go far. Oh no. He could not go far.

But whether he could go far or not, certain it was that they failed to
find him. They searched and searched, far beyond the distance he could
possibly have reached within the time, but all to no purpose. Well
there were still two upon whom they could wreak a cruel vengeance, and
now, all the savage aroused within them, they turned back, discussing
what they should do with these other two when the chief had given them
over, as of course he would.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.

"JEALOUSY IS CRUEL AS THE GRAVE."

Warren was seated in his office at Gydisdorp, and his whole power of
mind and thought was concentrated on a letter.

It lay on the table before him. It was not externally a pleasing
object. It was covered with thumb marks; the writing was in a laboured,
unformed hand; the spelling and grammar were vile and the contents
cryptic. Yet to him who now sat dwelling upon it the communication was
of so jubilant a nature that his only misgiving was that it might be
premature or not true. This was strange, for the gist of the document
was to announce the death of one who had been his friend.

"Jealousy is cruel as the grave," sings the Wise Man. Warren was not
familiar with the quotation but he instinctively, if unconsciously,
realised its purport as he sat there conning the greasy, ill-spelt
missive whose contents he knew by heart. And yet so paradoxically
logical was his own particular temperament that side by side with the
wild jubilation that thrilled his whole being over the certainty that
the one obstacle in his way was in it no longer, never would be in it
again, ran a vein of real regret for the man for whom under any other
circumstances he would have felt a genuine friendship. That he, Gilbert
Warren, sat there, in intent, at any rate, a murderer, was the last
thing in the world to occur to him. In intent only, as it happened, for
the main substance of the communication lay in one sentence, penned in
an utterly uneducated style. To be exact it ran thus:

"Wivern and jo fletwood have bin kild by the Usootos."