ra. Then he added with an oath, or so vowed Hans:
"Yet why should I, who know all this villain's guilt, refuse to carry
out the sentence of the law on him? Have no fear, commandant, the
accursed Allan Quatermain shall not succeed in his attempt to escape
to-morrow before the dawn."

"So be it," said the commandant. "Now, do all you who have heard those
words take note of them."

Then Hans, seeing that the council was about to break up, and fearing
lest he should be caught and killed, slipped away by the same road
that he had come. His thought was to warn me, but this he could not
do because of the guards. So he went to the Prinsloos, and finding the
vrouw alone with Marie, who had recovered her mind, told them everything
that he had heard.

As he said, Marie knelt down and prayed, or thought for a long while,
then rose and spoke.

"Tante," she said to the vrouw, "one thing is clear, that Allan will be
murdered at the dawn; now if he is hidden away he may escape."

"But where and how can we hide him," asked the vrouw, "seeing that the
place is guarded?"

"Tante," said Marie again, "at the back of your house is an old cattle
kraal made by Kaffirs, and in that cattle kraal, as I have seen, there
are mealie-pits where those Kaffirs stored their grain. Now I suggest
that we should put my husband into one of those mealie-pits and cover it
over. There the Boers might not find him, however close they searched."

"That is a good idea," said the vrouw; "but how in the name of God are
we to get Allan out of a guarded house into a mealie-pit?"

"Tante, I have a right to go to my husband's house, and there I will go.
Afterwards, too, I shall have the right to leave his house before he is
taken away. Well, he might leave it in my place, _as me_, and you and
Hans might help him. Then in the morning the Boers would come to search
the house and find no one except me."

"That is all very pretty," answered the vrouw; "but do you think, my
niece, that those accursed vultures will go away until they have picked
Allan's bones? Not they, for too much hangs on it. They will know that
he cannot be far off, and slink about the place until they have found
him in his mealie-hole or until he comes out. It is blood they are
after, thanks to your cousin Hernan, the liar, and blood they will have
for their own safety's sake. Never will they go away from here until
they see Allan lying dead upon the ground."

Now, according to Hans, Marie t