X

"Dear Aunt Constantia, what is the use of crying? I have done with it for good."

"You are so dreadfully changed and so awfully composed, and I always was sensitive. And, besides, to find you like this when I expected you to beat your head upon the floor—or was it against the wall, they said?—and pray to be put out of your misery by poison, or revolver, or knife, as though anybody would be wicked enough to do it ..."

A faint stain of colour crept into Lady Bridget-Mary's white cheeks.

"All that is over, Aunt Constantia. Forget it, as I have done, and drink a little of this. The Sisters believe it to be calming to the nerves."

"To naturally calm nerves, I suppose." The Dowager accepted the tumbler. "What a nice, thick, old-fashioned glass!" She sipped. "You hear how my teeth are chattering against the rim. That is because I have flown here in such a hurry of agitation upon hearing from your father that you have decided to enter the Novitiate at once."

"It is true," said Lady Bridget-Mary, standing very tall and dark and straight against the background of the parlour window, that was filled in with ground-glass, and veiled with snowy curtains of starched thread-lace.

"True! When not ten months ago you declared to me that you would not be a nun for all the world.... You begged me to befriend you in the matter of Captain Mildare. I undertook, alas! that office...."

The Dowager-Duchess blew her nose.

"A little more of the orange-flower water, dear aunt?"

"'Dear aunt,' when you are trampling upon my very heart-strings! And let me tell you, Bridget-Mary, you have always been my favourite niece. 'For all the world,' you said with your own lips, 'I would not be a nun!' Three millions will buy, if not the world, at least a good slice of it.... Figuratively, I offer them to you in this outstretched hand!" The Dowager extended a puce kid glove. "The husband who goes with them is a good creature. I have seen and spoken with him, and the dear Queen regards me as a judge of men. 'Consie,' she has said, 'you have perception....' What my Sovereign credits may not my niece believe?"

Lady Bridget-Mary's black brows were stern over the great joyless eyes that looked out of their sculptured caves upon the world she had bidden good-bye to. But the fine lines of humour about the wings of the sensitive nostrils and the corners of the large finely-modelled mouth quivered a little.

"Drink a little more orange-flower water, dear, and never tell me who the man is. I do not wish to hear. I decline to hear."

The Dowager-Duchess lost her temper.

"That is because you know already, and despise money that is made of jam. Yet coal and beer are swallowed with avidity by young women who have not forfeited the right to be fastidious. That is the last thing I wished to say, but you have wrung it from me. Have you no pride? Do you want Society to say that you have embraced the profession of a Religious, and intend henceforth to employ your talents in teaching sniffy-nosed schoolgirls Greek and Algebra and Mathematics, because this Mildare has jilted you? Again, have you no pride?" She agitated the Britannia-metal teaspoon furiously in the empty tumbler.

Lady Bridget-Mary took the tumbler away. Whyshould the humble property of the Sisters be broken because this kind, fussy woman chose to upbraid?

"You ask, Have I no pride?" she said. "Why should I have pride when Our Lord is so humble that He does not disdain to take for His bride the woman Richard Mildare has rejected?"

"You are incorrigible, dearest," said the sobbing Dowager-Duchess, as she kissed her, "and Castleclare must use all his influence with the Holy Father to induce the Comtesse de Lutetia to give you the veil. All of you think I am damned, and possibly I may be, but if so I shall be afforded an opportunity (which will not be mine in this life) of giving Captain Mildare a piece of my mind!"

So the Dowager-Duchess melted out of the story, and Lady Bridget-Mary Bawne became a nun.

This is what the Mother-Superior wrote to her kinswoman, with her mobile, eloquent lips folded closely together as she thought, and her grave eyes following the swift journey of the pen as it formed the sentences:

"Now let me speak to you of Lynette Mildare. I have never thought it necessary to make the slightest disguise of my great partiality for this, the dearest of all the many children given me by Our Lord since I resigned my crown of earthly motherhood to Him."

She stopped, remembering what another great lady, also a relative of hers, had remarked when it was first made public that she intended to enter the Novitiate:

"Indeed! It would seem, then, that you are devoid of ambition, my dear, unlike the other people of your house."

She had said, paraphrasing a retort previously made:

"Does it strike you as lack of ambition that one of our family should prefer Christ before any earthly spouse?"

What a base utterance that had seemed to her afterwards! How devoid of the true spirit of the religious, how hateful, petty, profane! But the great lady had beengreatly struck by it, and had gone about quoting the words everywhere. She, who had spoken them, repented them with tears, and set the memory of them between her and ill-considered, worldly speech, for ever.

She wrote on now:

"She has no vocation for the life of a religious. I doubt her being happy or successful as a teacher here, were I removed from my post by supreme earthly authority, or by death, either contingency being the expression of the Will of God. She has a reserved, sensitive nature, quick to feel, and eager to hide what she feels, indifferent to praise or popularity among the many, anxiously desirous to please, passionately devoted where she gives her love...."

The firm mouth quivered, and a mist stole before her eyes. Being human, she took the handkerchief that lay amongst her papers and wiped the crowding tears away, and went on:

"I could wish, in anticipation of either eventuality named, that provision might now be made for her. Those who love me—yourself I know to be among the number—will not, I feel assured, be indifferent to my wish that she should be placed beyond the reach of want."

She wrote on, knowing that the implied wish would be observed as a command:

"We have never been able to trace any persons who might have been her parents—we have never even known her real name.—Those among whom her childhood was spent called her by none. As you know, I gave her in Holy Baptism one that was our dear dead mother's, together with the surname of a lost friend. She is, and must be always, known as Lynette Mildare."

Her eyes were tearless, and her hand quite steady as she continued:

"You must not be at all alarmed or shaken by this letter. I am perfectly well in health, be quite assured; I trust I may be spared to carry on my work here for many long years to come. But in case it should be otherwise, I write thus:"The country is greatly disturbed, in spite of the reassuringreports that have been disseminated by the Home Authorities. I do not, and cannot, imagine what the official view may be in London at this moment, but it is certain that the Transvaal and Free State are preparing for war. Every hour the enmity between the Boers and the English deepens in intensity. It will be to many minds a relief when the storm bursts. The War Office may think meanly of the Africanised Dutchman as a fighting force, but the opinion of every loyal Briton in this country is that he is not a foe to be despised, and that he will shed the last drop of his own blood and his children's for the sake of his independence."Above the petty interests of greedy capitalists looms the wider question: Shall the Briton or the Dutchman rule in South Africa? Here in this insignificant frontier town we wait the sounding of the tocsin. The Orange Free State has openly allied itself with the Transvaal Government. There are said to be several commandos in laager on the Border. A public meeting of citizens of this town has been held, at which a vote of 'No confidence' in the Dutch Ministers has been passed, and an appeal for help has been made to the Government at Cape Town. It is not yet publicly known what the response has been, if there is any. I think it ominous that all of our Dutch pupils, save one, should have been hurriedly sent for by their parents before the ending of the term. Knowing my responsibility, I am sending all home, except the few who happen to be resident in this town, and the school will remain closed, at all events, until the outlook assumes a less threatening aspect. It is a relief to many that a Military Commandant has been appointed by the authorities at Cape Town, and that he arrived here a week ago. He is reported to be an officer of energy and decision, and as he has already set the troops under his command to work at putting the town into a condition of defence, and is organising the civil male population into a regiment of armed——"

"The country is greatly disturbed, in spite of the reassuringreports that have been disseminated by the Home Authorities. I do not, and cannot, imagine what the official view may be in London at this moment, but it is certain that the Transvaal and Free State are preparing for war. Every hour the enmity between the Boers and the English deepens in intensity. It will be to many minds a relief when the storm bursts. The War Office may think meanly of the Africanised Dutchman as a fighting force, but the opinion of every loyal Briton in this country is that he is not a foe to be despised, and that he will shed the last drop of his own blood and his children's for the sake of his independence.

"Above the petty interests of greedy capitalists looms the wider question: Shall the Briton or the Dutchman rule in South Africa? Here in this insignificant frontier town we wait the sounding of the tocsin. The Orange Free State has openly allied itself with the Transvaal Government. There are said to be several commandos in laager on the Border. A public meeting of citizens of this town has been held, at which a vote of 'No confidence' in the Dutch Ministers has been passed, and an appeal for help has been made to the Government at Cape Town. It is not yet publicly known what the response has been, if there is any. I think it ominous that all of our Dutch pupils, save one, should have been hurriedly sent for by their parents before the ending of the term. Knowing my responsibility, I am sending all home, except the few who happen to be resident in this town, and the school will remain closed, at all events, until the outlook assumes a less threatening aspect. It is a relief to many that a Military Commandant has been appointed by the authorities at Cape Town, and that he arrived here a week ago. He is reported to be an officer of energy and decision, and as he has already set the troops under his command to work at putting the town into a condition of defence, and is organising the civil male population into a regiment of armed——"

There was a light knock at the door. She responded with the permission to enter, and a tall, slight girl, with red-brown hair, came in and closed the door, dropping her little curtsy to the Mother-Superior. She wore the plain black alpaca uniform of the Convent, with the ribbon of the Headship of the Red Class, to be resigned when she shouldbecome a pupil-teacher at the opening of the next term; and the rare and beautiful smile broke over the face of the elder woman as the younger came to her side.

"Are you busy, Reverend Mother? Do you want me to go away?"

"I shall have finished in another five minutes, and then there will be no more letters to write, my child. Sit where you choose; take a book, and be quiet; I shall not keep you waiting long."

The words were few; the Mother-Superior's manner a little curt in speaking them. But where Lynette chose to sit was on the cheap drugget that covered the beeswaxed boards, with her squirrel-coloured hair and soft cheek pressed against the black serge habit.

The Mother-Superior wrote on, apparently absorbed, and with knitted brows of attention, but her large, white, beautiful left hand dropped half unconsciously to the silken hair and the velvet cheek, and stayed there.

There is a type of woman the lightest touch of whose hand is subtler and more sweet than the most honeyed kisses of others. And the Mother-Superior was not liberal of caresses. When Lynette turned her lips to the hand, the face that bent over the paper remained as stern and as absorbed as ever. She went on writing, directed, closed, and stamped her letter, and set it aside under a pebble of white quartz, lined and streaked with the faint silvery green of gold.

"Now, my child?"

The girl said, flushing scarlet:

"Reverend Mother, I have told the Red Class the truth about me!"

The Mother-Superior started; dismay was in her face.

"Why, child?"

"I—I mean"—the scarlet flush gave place to paleness—"that I have no name and no family, and no friends except you, dearest, and the Sisters. That you found me, and took me in, and have kept me out of charity."

"Was it necessary to have told—anything whatever?"

"I think so, Mother, and I am glad now that I have done it. There will be no need for deception any more."

"My daughter, there has never been the slightestdeception of any kind whatsoever upon your part, or the part of anyone else who knew. No interests suffered by your keeping your own secret. Who first solicited your confidence in this matter?"

"Greta Du Taine."

"Greta Du Taine." Very cold was the tone of the Mother-Superior. "May I ask how she received the information she had the bad taste to seek?"

"Mother—she took it—not quite as I expected."

"Yet she and you have always been friends, my child."

Lynette rose up upon her knees. The long arm of the Mother-Superior went round the slight figure that leaned against her, and in the sudden gesture was a passion of protecting motherhood.

"Mother, she does not wish to be my friend any longer. She was quite horrified to remember that she had invited me to stay with her at the Du Taine place near Johannesburg. But she said that if I liked she would not tell the class."

"I have no fear of the rest of the class. They have honour, and good feeling, and warm hearts. What was your reply to Greta's obliging proposition?"

"I told her that the sooner everybody knew the better; and I went out of the room, and came to you—as I always do—as I always have done, ever since——"

Her voice broke in the first sob.

"Ah!" cried the voice of the mother-heart she crept to, as the long arms in the loose black serge sleeves went out and folded her close, "ah, if I might be always here for you to run to! But God knows best!"

She said aloud, gently putting the girl away:

"Well, the ordeal is over, and will not have to be gone through again. And for the future, bear in mind that every human being has a right to regard his own business—or hers—as private, and to exclude the curious from affairs which do not concern them." She reached out quick tender hands, and framed the wistful, sensitive face in them, and added, in a lower tone: "For a little told may beget in them the desire to know more. And always remember this: that the only just claim to your perfect confidence in all that concerns your past life, and I sayallwith meaning"—thegirl's white eyelids fell under her earnest gaze, and the delicate lips began to quiver—"will rest in the man—the honourable and brave and worthy gentleman—who I pray may one day be your husband."

"No!" she cried out sharply as if in terror, and the slight figure was shaken by a sudden spasm of trembling. "Oh, Mother, no! Never, never!"

With a gesture of infinite pity and tenderness the Mother drew her close, and hid the shame-dyed face upon her bosom, and whispered, with her lips upon the red-brown hair:

"My lamb, my dearest, my poor, poor child! It shall be never if you choose, Lynette. But make no rash vows, no determinations that you think irrevocable. Leave the future to God. Now dry these dear eyes, and put old thoughts and memories of sorrow and of wrong most resolutely away from you. Be happy, as Our Lord meant all innocent creatures of His to be. And do not be tempted to magnify Greta's offence against friendship. She has acted according to her lights, and if they are of the kind that shine in marshy places, a better Light will shine upon her path one day. I know that you have real affection for her ... though I must own I have always wondered in what lay the secret of her popularity in the school?"

"She is so amusing—and so pretty, Mother."

"She is exquisitely pretty. And beauty is one of the most excellent among all the gifts of God. Our sense of what is beautiful and the delight we have in the perception of it must linger with us from those days when Angels walked visibly on earth, and talked with the children of men. A lovely soul in a lovely body, nothing can be more excellent, but such a body does not always cage what St. Columb called 'the bird of beauty.' And we must not be swayed or led by outward and perishable things, that are illusions, and deceits, and snares."

The Mother-Superior reached out a long arm, and took a solid leather-bound, red-edged volume from the table, and opened it at a page marked by a flamingo's feather, whose delicate pink faded at the tip into rosy-white.

"I was reading this a little while before you came in. If you were not a little dunce at Greek, you would be able to construe the classic author for yourself."

"But I am a dunce, dear, and so I leave you to read him to me," said Lynette triumphantly.

"Well, balance this heavy book, and listen."

She read:

"'When first the Father of the Immortals fashioned with his divine hands the human shape:"'An image first he made of red clay from Idâ, tempered with pure water from the stream of Xanthos, and wine from the golden kylix borne by beautiful Ganymede, and it was godlike to look upon as a thing fashioned by the hands of the god. But the clay was not tempered sufficiently and warped in the drying. Then Zeus Patêr fashioned another shape with more cunning, and this was tempered well and warped not. And he bent down to breathe between its lips the living soul. But as he stooped, Hephaistos, jealous of the divine gift about to be conferred upon the mortal race, sent from his forges smoke and vapour, which obscured the vision of the Almighty Workman. So that the imperfect image received that which was meant for the perfect one."'And Zeus Patêr, being angered, said: "See what thy malice has wrought. Behold, a beautiful soul has been set in a body unbeauteous and through thine act, and god though I be, I cannot take back the gift that I have given." Then into the other image of Man the divine maker breathed a soul. But Zeus being wearied with his labours, and angered by the craft of Hephaistos, it was less pure than the first. And so two men came into being."'And he whose body had been fashioned perfectly and without flaw by the hands of the divine craftsman, walked the earth with gracious mien. Fair-eyed was he, with locks like clustering vine-tendrils, and cheeks rosy as the apples of Love; but the soul of this man was cunning, and he rejoiced in evils and cruelties, and deceits and mockeries were upon his lips."'And he whose image had warped in the drying was unbeautiful in body and swart to look upon, as though blackened by the forge-fires of Hephaistos, but he dealt uprightly and hated evil, and on his lips there was no guile, but faithfulness and truth."'And he who was imperfect in body was yet fairer in the eyes of Zeus Patêr than his brother; because there dwelt within him a beauteous soul.'"

"'When first the Father of the Immortals fashioned with his divine hands the human shape:

"'An image first he made of red clay from Idâ, tempered with pure water from the stream of Xanthos, and wine from the golden kylix borne by beautiful Ganymede, and it was godlike to look upon as a thing fashioned by the hands of the god. But the clay was not tempered sufficiently and warped in the drying. Then Zeus Patêr fashioned another shape with more cunning, and this was tempered well and warped not. And he bent down to breathe between its lips the living soul. But as he stooped, Hephaistos, jealous of the divine gift about to be conferred upon the mortal race, sent from his forges smoke and vapour, which obscured the vision of the Almighty Workman. So that the imperfect image received that which was meant for the perfect one.

"'And Zeus Patêr, being angered, said: "See what thy malice has wrought. Behold, a beautiful soul has been set in a body unbeauteous and through thine act, and god though I be, I cannot take back the gift that I have given." Then into the other image of Man the divine maker breathed a soul. But Zeus being wearied with his labours, and angered by the craft of Hephaistos, it was less pure than the first. And so two men came into being.

"'And he whose body had been fashioned perfectly and without flaw by the hands of the divine craftsman, walked the earth with gracious mien. Fair-eyed was he, with locks like clustering vine-tendrils, and cheeks rosy as the apples of Love; but the soul of this man was cunning, and he rejoiced in evils and cruelties, and deceits and mockeries were upon his lips.

"'And he whose image had warped in the drying was unbeautiful in body and swart to look upon, as though blackened by the forge-fires of Hephaistos, but he dealt uprightly and hated evil, and on his lips there was no guile, but faithfulness and truth.

"'And he who was imperfect in body was yet fairer in the eyes of Zeus Patêr than his brother; because there dwelt within him a beauteous soul.'"

"And yet, Mother, if your beautiful soul had not been given beautiful windows to look out at, and a beautiful mouth to kiss me or scold me with, and beautiful hands to hold, it would have been a beastly shame!"

Is there a woman living who can resist such sweet daughterly flatteries? This was very much a woman, and very much a mother, if very much a nun. She kissed the mouth distilling such dear honey.

"This, not for the compliment, but because it is seven years to-day since I found you, lying like some poor little strayed lamb on the veld, under the burning sun."

"That was my real birthday, dearest, dearest...."

The girl pressed closer to her with dumb, vehement affection, as though she would have grown to the bosom that had been her shield since then.

"On that day a little later, when I looked down and you looked up with big eyes that begged for love, I knew that we had found each other. And we have never lost each other since, I think?"

She smiled radiantly into the loving eyes.

"Never, my Mother. But if we did ... if we are ever to be estranged or parted, it would be better ... oh! it would be better if you had passed by in the waggon, and left me lying, and the aasvogels and the wild-dogs had done the rest."

The Mother-Superior said, loosening the clinging arms, and speaking sternly:

"Never, my daughter. You do gravely wrong to say so. Holy Baptism has been yours, and Confirmation, and you have shared with His Faithful in the Body of Christ.... Never let me hear you say that again!"

"Mother, I promise you, you never shall. But I had a dream last night that was most vivid and strange and awful. It has haunted me ever since."

The Mother-Superior started, for she also had had a strange dream. Of that vision had been born the written letter that now lay under the quartz paper-weight—the letter that was to be sent, with others, by the next English mail that should go out from Gueldersdorp, which said mail, being intercepted by the Boers, was not for many months to reach its destination. Supposing it had, this story neednever have been written, or else another would have been written in its place.

"Dear heart, I do not think that it is good or useful to brood upon such things, or to relate them. And the Church forbids us to take account of mere dreams, or in any way be swayed by them."

"That has always puzzled me. Because, you know ... supposing St. Joseph had refused to credit a dream?..."

"There are dreams and dreams, my dear. And the heavenly visions of the Saints are not to be confounded with our trivial subconscious memories. Besides, sweets and fruits and pastry consumed in the seniors' dormitory at night are not only an infringement of school rules, but an insult to the digestion."

"Mother, how did you find out?" cried Lynette. There was something very like a dimple in the bleached olive of the sweet worn cheek, lurking near the edge of the close coif, and a twinkle of laughter in the deep grey eyes that you thought were black until you had learned better.

"Well, though you may not find it easy to believe, I was once a girl at a boarding-school, and I possibly remember how we usually celebrated a breaking-up. There is the washing-bell; the pupils' tea-bell will ring directly; you must hurry, or you will be late. One moment. What of this unpleasant incident that took place during the afternoon walk yesterday? Sister Cleophée and Sister Francis-Clare have not given me a very definite account."

Lynette's fair skin flushed poppy-red.

"Mother, they hooted us on the road to the Recreation Ground."

Upon the great brows of the Mother-Superior sat the majesty of coming tempest. Her white hand clenched, her tone was awfully stern:

"Who were 'they'?"

"Some drunken Boers and store-boys—at least, I think they were drunk—and some Dutch railway-men. They cried shame on the Dutch girls for learning from vile English idolaters. Then more men came up and joined them. They threw stones, and threatened to duck Sister Cleophée and the two other Sisters in the river. And they might have tried to, though we senior girls got round them—atleast, some of us did—and said they should try that on us first——"

"That was courageous."

"We"—Lynette laughed a little nervously—"we were awfully frightened, all the same."

"My dear, without fear there would have been no courage. Then I am told an English officer interposed?"

"He was coming from the direction of the Hospital—a tall thin man in Service khâki, with a riding-sjambok under his arm. But it would have been as good as a sword if he had used it on those men. When he lifted it in speaking to them they huddled together like sheep."

"You have no idea who he was, of course?"

"I do not know his name, but I heard one of the Boers say, 'That slim duyvel with the sjambok is the new Military Commandant.' Another officer was with him, much younger, taller, and with fair hair. He——"

"I hope I shall soon have an opportunity of thanking the Commandant personally. As it is, I shall write. Now go, my dear."

Lynette took her familiar kiss, and dropped her formal curtsy, and went with the red sunset touching her squirrel-coloured hair to flame. The tea-bell rang as she shut the door behind her, and directly afterwards the gate-bell clanged, sending an iron shout echoing through the whitewashed, tile-paved passages, as if heralding a visitor who would not be denied. An Irish novice who was on duty with the Sister attendant on the gate came shortly afterwards to the room of the Mother-Superior, bringing a card on a little wooden tray.

The Mother, the opening sentences of her note of thanks wet upon the sheet before her, took the card, and knew that the letter need not be sent.

"This gentleman desired to see me?"

"He did so, Reverend Mother," whispered the timid Irish girl, who stood in overwhelming awe of the majestic personality before her. "'Ask the Mother-Superior will she consent to receive me?' says he. 'If she won't, say that she must.' Says I: 'Sir, I'd not drame to presume give Herself a message that bowld, but if you'll please to wait, I'll tell her what you're after saying.'"

"Quite right, Katie. Now go and tell Sister Tobias to show him into the parlour. I will be there directly."

Katie bobbed and vanished. When the Mother-Superior came into the parlour, the visitor was standing near the fireplace, with his hands behind his back. One wore a shabby dogskin riding-glove. The other, lean and brown and knotty, held his riding-cane and the other glove, and a grey "smasher" hat. He was looking up quietly and intently at a framed oil-painting that hung above.

It represented a Syrian desert landscape, pale and ghastly, under the light of a great white moon, with one lonely Figure standing like a sentinel against a towering fang of rock. Lurking forms of fierce beasts of prey were dimly to be distinguished amongst the shadows, and by the side of the patient, lonely watcher brooded with outspread bat-wings, a Shadow infinitely more terrible than any of these. It was rather a poor copy of a modern picture, but the truth and force and inspiration of the original had made of the copyist an artist for the time. The pure dignity and lofty faith and patience of the Christ-eyes, haggard with bodily sleeplessness and spiritual battle, the indomitable resistance breathing in the lines of the Christ figure, wan and gaunt with physical famine as with the nobler hunger of the soul, were rendered with fidelity and power.

The stranger's keen ear caught the Mother's long, swift step, and the sweep of her woollen draperies over the shiny beeswaxed floor. He wheeled sharply, brought his heels together, and bowed. She returned his salutation with her inimitable dignity and grace. With his eyes on the pure, still calmness of the face framed in the white close coif, the Colonel commented mentally:

"What a noble-looking woman!"

The Mother-Superior thought, as her composed eyes swept over the tall, spare, broad-shouldered figure and the strong, lean, tanned face, with its alert, hazel eyes, nose of the falcon-beak order, and firm straight mouth unconcealed by the short-clipped moustache:

"This is a brave man."

The great of soul are not slow to find each other out. These two recognised each other at meeting. Before he had explained his errand, she had thanked him cordially, directly, and simply, for his timely interference of the previous day.

"One of the lesser reasons of my visit, which I must explain is official in character," he said, "was to advise you that your pupils and the ladies in charge of them will not henceforth be safe from insult except in those parts of the town most frequented by our countrymen, and rarely even there. It would be wise of you under existing circumstances, which I shall explain as fully and as briefly as I may, to send your pupils without delay to their homes."

"All that have not already left," she assured him, "with the exception of those whose parents reside in the town, or who have no living relatives, and therefore do not leave us, go North and South by early trains to-morrow."

"Ma'am," he said, "I am heartily glad to hear it." He added, as she invited him to be seated: "Thank you, but I have been in the saddle since five this morning, and if you have no objection I should prefer to stand. And for another reason, I explain things better on my legs. But you will allow me to find you a seat, if—any of these may be moved?" His glance, with some perturbation in it, reviewed the stiff ranks of chairs severely marshalled in Convent fashion against the varnished skirting-board.

"They are not fixtures," she said, with quiet amusement at his evident relief, and he got her a chair, the largest and most solid that the room offered, and planted himself opposite her, standing on the hearthrug, with one hand resting on the corner of the high mantelshelf, and the toe of a spurred riding-boot on the plain brick kerb.

"I may as well say ..."—he ran a finger round the inside of the collar that showed above the khâki jacket—"that, though I have often had the pleasure, and I will add, the great advantage, of meeting ladies of—of your religious profession before, this is the first time that I ever was inside a Convent."

"Or a boarding-school?" she asked, and her rare, sudden smile irradiated her. His hand dropped from his collar. He looked at her with a sudden warmth of admiration there was no mistaking. But her beauty went as suddenly as it had come, and her arched, black brows frowned slightly as she said, in tones that were very cold and very clear, and rather ironical:

"Sir, you are good enough to waste valuable time in trying to break, with due consideration for the nerves of a large household of unprotected women, the news we have expected daily for months. You have come here to announce to us the bursting of the cloud of War. Is it not so?"

He was taken aback, but hid it like a diplomat.

"Ma'am, it is so. The public notice was posted in the town this morning. Forces of Boers are massed on the West Natal and East Baraland borders, waiting until the British fire a shot. Their secret orders are to wait that signal, but some unlooked-for event may cause them to anticipate these.... And we shall be wise to prepare for eventualities. For myself, having been despatched by the British Government on special service to report to the Home Authorities upon our defences in the North—it is an open secret now—I have been sent down here to put the town into a condition to withstand siege. And frankly, without apology for necessary and inevitable bluntness, one of the most important of those conditions is—that the women and children should be got out of it."

The blow had been delivered. The angry blush that he had expected did not invade the pale olive of her cheeks.

He added:

"I hope you will understand that I say this because it is my duty. I am not naturally unsociable, or bearish, or a surly misogynist. Rather the contrary. Quite the contrary."

She remembered a slim, boyish, young lieutenant of Hussars with whom she had danced in a famous London ball-room more than twenty years back. That boy a woman hater! Struggle as she would the Mother-Superior could not keep Lady Bridget-Mary Bawne from coming to the surface for an instant. But she went under directly,and left nothing but a spark of laughter in the beautiful grave eyes.

"I understand," she said. "Woman in time of peace may add a certain welcome pleasantness to life. In time of war she is nothing but a helpless incubus."

"Let me point out, ma'am, that I did not say so. But she possesses a capacity for being killed equal in ratio to that of the human male, without being equally able to defend herself. In addition to this, she eats; and I shall require all the rations that may be available to keep alive the combatant members of the community."

"Eating is a habit," agreed the Mother-Superior, "which even the most rigid disciplinarians of the body have found difficult to break."

His mouth straightened sternly under the short-clipped brown moustache. Here was a woman who dared to bandy words with the Officer Commanding the Garrison. He drew a shabby notebook from a breast-pocket, and consulted it.

"On the eleventh, the day after to-morrow, a special train, leaving No. 2 platform of the railway-station, will be placed by the British Government at the disposal of those married women, spinsters, and children who wish to follow the example of those who left to-day, and go down to Cape Town. Those who prefer to go North are advised to leave for Malamye Siding or Johnstown, places at a certain distance from the Transvaal Border, where they will be almost certain to find safety. Those who insist upon remaining in the town I cannot, of course, remove by force. I will make all possible arrangements to laager them safely, but this will entail heavy extra labour upon the forces at my command, and inevitable discomfort—possibly severe suffering and privation—upon themselves. To you, madam, I appeal to set a high example. Your Community numbers, unless I am incorrectly informed, twelve religious. Consent to take the step I urge upon you, retreat with your nuns to Cape Town while the opportunity is yours."

He folded his arms, having spoken this curtly and crisply. The Mother-Superior rose up out of her chair. It seemed to him as though she would never have donerising, but at last she stood before him, very straight and awfully tall, with her great stern eyes an inch above the level of his own, and her white hands folded in her black serge sleeves.

"Sir," she said, "we are here under the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Bishop of the Diocese. We have received no order from His Eminence to quit our post—and until we receive it, give me leave to tell you, with all respect for your high official authority, that we shall remain in Gueldersdorp."

Their looks crossed like swords. He grew crimson over the white unsunburned line upon his forehead, and his moustache straightened like a bar of rusty-red iron across his thin, tanned face. But he respected moral power and determination when he encountered them, and this salient woman provoked his respect.

"Let us keep cool——" he began.

"I assure you that I have never been otherwise," she said, "since the beginning of this interview."

"Ma'am," he said, "you state the fact. Let me keep cool, and point out to you a few of the—peculiarities in which the present situation unfortunately abounds."

He laid down, with a look that asked permission, his hat and cane and the odd glove upon the round, shining walnut-table that stood, adorned with mild little religious works, in the geometrical centre of the Convent parlour, and checked the various points off upon the fingers of the gloved hand with the lean, brown, bare one.

"I anticipate very shortly the outbreak of hostilities." He had quite forgotten that he was talking to a member of the squeaking sex. "I have begun immediately upon my arrival here to prepare for them. The nucleus of a sand-bag fort-system has been formed already, mines are being laid down far in the front, and every male of the population who has a pair of capable hands has had a rifle put into them."

She looked at him, and approved the male type of energy and action. "If I had been a man," she thought, "I should have wished to be one like this." But she bent her head silently, and he went on.

"We have an armoured train in the railway-yard,with a Maxim and a Hotchkiss. We have a Nordenfeldt, a couple of Maxims more, four seven-pounder guns of almost prehistoric date, slow of fire, uncertain as regards the elevating-gear, and, I tell you plainly, as dangerous, some of 'em, to be behind as to be in front of! One or two more we've got that were grey-headed in the seventies. By the Lord! I wish one or two Whitehall heads I know were mopping 'em out this minute. Ahem! Ahem!"

He coughed, and grew red under his sun-tan. Her eyes were elsewhere.

"Ma'am, you must try to recollect that the Boer forces are armed with the newest Krupps and other guns, and that it is more than possible they may attempt to shell the town. In that case artillery of tremendous range, and a flight almost equal to that of sound itself—I won't be too technical, I assure you!—will be mustered against our crazy pieces, only fit for the scrap-heap, or for gate ornaments. Understand, I tell you what is common knowledge among our friends—common jest among our enemies. And another thing I will tell you, ma'am. Those enemies shall never enter Gueldersdorp!"

She was radiant now, with that smile upon her lips, and that glow in the great eyes that met his with such frank approval. Confound it, what business had a nun to be anything like so beautiful? Would she pale, would she tremble, when he told her the last truth of all?

"Your Convent, ma'am, unluckily for your Community, happens to be, if not the biggest, at least the most conspicuously situated building in the place, lying as it does at a distance of four hundred yards from the town, on the north-east side. Like the Hospital, of course, it will be under the protection of the Red-Cross Flag. But the Boer is not chivalrous. He does not object to killing women or sick people, nor does he observe with any standing scrupulousness the Geneva Convention. Any object that shows up nicely on the skyline is good enough to pound away at, and the Red-Cross Flag has often helped him to get a satisfactory range. If they bombard us, as I have reason to believe they will, you'll have iron and lead in tons poured through these walls."

She said:

"When they fall about our ears, Colonel, it will be time to leave them!"

He adored a gallant spirit, and here was one indeed.

"Ma'am, I am disarmed, since you take things in this way."

"It is the only way in which to take them," she said. "There should be no panic in the hearts of those who wait on the Divine Will. Moreover, I should wish you to understand in case of siege, and an extra demand upon the staffs of the Town and Field Hospitals, that we are all—or nearly all—certificated nurses, and would willingly place our services at your disposal. Let me hope that you will call upon us without hesitation if the necessity should arise."

He thanked her, and had taken leave, when he asked with diffidence if he might be permitted to see the Convent chapel. She consented willingly, and passed on before, tall and stately, and moving with long, light, even steps, her flowing serge draperies whispering over the tiled passages. The chapel was at the end of a long whitewashed corridor upon the airy floor above. His keen glance took in every feature of the simple, spotless little sanctuary as the tall, black-clad figure swept noiselessly to the upper end of the aisle between the rows of rush-seated chairs, and knelt for an instant in veneration of the Divine Presence hidden in the Tabernacle.

"Unfortunately situated!" he muttered, standing stiffly by the west door. Then he glanced right and left, a thumb and finger in the breast-pocket of his jacket, feeling for a worn little pigskin purse. As he passed out before her at the motion, and she mechanically dipped her fingers in the holy-water font, and made the Sign of the Cross before she closed the chapel door, she saw that he held out to her a five-pound note.

"Ma'am, I am not a Roman Catholic, but ..."

"There is no box for alms," she said, pausing outside the shut door, while the lay-Sister waited at the passage end, "as this is only a private chapel."

"I observed that, ma'am. I am, as I have said, a Protestant. But in the behalf of a dear friend of mine, aBritish officer, of your own faith, who I have reason to believe died without benefit of his clergy, perhaps with this you would arrange that a service should be held in memory of the dead?"

"I understand," said the Mother-Superior. "You suggest that Holy Mass should be offered for the repose of your friend's soul? Well, I will convey your offering to our chaplain, Father Wix, since you desire it."

"I do desire it—or, rather, poor Mildare would."

An awful sensation as of sinking down through the solid floors, through the foundations of the Convent, into unfathomable deeps possessed her. Her eyes closed; she forced them open, and made a desperate rally of her sinking forces. Unseen she put out one hand behind her, and leaned it for support against the iron-studded oak timbers of the chapel door. But his eyes were not upon her as he went on, unconsciously, to deal the last, worst blow.

"I said, ma'am, that my dead friend ... the name is Richard Mildare, Captain, late of the Grey Hussars.... You are ill, ma'am. I have been inconsiderate, and over-tired you." He had become aware that great dark circles had drawn themselves round her eyes, and that even her lips were colourless. She said, with a valiant effort:

"I assure you, with thanks, that you have been most considerate, and that I am perfectly well. Are you at liberty to tell me, sir, the date of Captain Mildare's death? For I know one who was also his friend, and would"—a spasm passed over her face—"take an interest in hearing the particulars."

"Ma'am, you shall know what I know myself. About twenty years ago Captain Mildare, owing to certain unhappy circumstances, social, and not pecuniary ones, sent in his papers, sold his Commission, and left England."

She waited.

"I heard of him in Paris. Then, later, I heard from him. He was with her here in South Africa. She was a woman for whom he had given up everything. They travelled continually, never resting long anywhere, he, and she, and—their child. She died on the trek and he buried her."

"Yes?"

The voice was curiously toneless.

"Where he buried her has only recently come to my knowledge. It was at a kind of veld tavern in the Orange Free State, a shanty in the grass-country between Driepoort and Kroonfontein, where travellers can get a bad lodging, and bad liquor, and worse company. 'Trekkers Plaats' they call the place now. But when my friend was there it was known as the 'Free State Hotel.'"

Her lips shut as if to keep out bitter, drowning waters; her face was white as wax within the starched blue-white of the nun's coif; his slow sentences fell one by one upon her naked heart, and ate their way in like vitriol. Quite well, too well, she knew what was coming.

"He dug her grave with his own hands. He meant to have a clergyman read the Burial Service over it, but before that could be arranged for he also died—of fever, I gather, though nothing is very clear, except that the two graves are there. I have seen them, and have also ascertained that whatever property he left was appropriated by the scoundrel who kept the hotel, and afterwards sold it, and cleared out of South Africa; and that the child is not to be found. God knows what has become of her! The man who robbed her father may have murdered or sold her—or taken her to England. A man bearing his name was mixed up in a notorious case tried at the Central Criminal Court five years ago. And the case, which ruined a well-known West End surgeon, involved the death of a young woman. I trust the victim may not have been the unhappy girl herself. My solicitors in London have been instructed to make inquiries towards the removal of that doubt...."

If those keen eyes of his had not been averted, he must have seen the strong shuddering that convulsed the woman's frame, and the spasm of agony that wrung the lips she pressed together, and the glistening damps of anguish that broke out upon the broad white forehead. To save her life she could not have said to him, "She whom you seek is here!" But a voice wailed in her heart, more piercingly than Rachel's, and it cried: "Richard's daughter! She is Richard's daughter! The homeless thing, the blighted child I found upon the veld, and nursedback to life and happiness and forgetfulness of a hideous past; whom I took into my empty heart, and taught to call me Mother.... She is the fruit of my own betrayal! the offspring of the friend who deceived and the man who deserted me!"

The visitor was going on, his grave gaze still turned aside. "Of course, the age of the unhappy girl whose death brought about the trial I speak of—everything depends upon that. Mildare's daughter was a child of three years old when she lost father and mother. If alive to-day she would be nineteen years of age. I wish it had been my great good fortune to trace and find her. She should have had the opportunity of growing up to be a noble woman. In this place, if it might have been, and with an example like yours before her eyes ... ma'am, good-afternoon."

He bowed to her, and went away with short, quick, even steps, following the lay-Sister who was to take him to the gate.

She tottered into the chapel, and sank down before the altar, and strove to pray. Her mind was an eddying blackness shot with the livid glare of electric fires. Her faith rocked like a palm in the tempest; her soul was tossed across raging billows like a vessel in the grip of the cyclone. Being so great, she suffered greatly; being so strong, she had strong passions to wrestle with and to subdue. Awhile, like that other Mary, who, unlike her, was a fleshly sinner, she strove, rent as it seemed to her, by seven devils. And then she fell down prone at her Master's nail-pierced Feet, and found there at last the healing gift of tears.

Emigration Jane, the new under-housemaid on trial at the Convent, had a gathering on the top joint of the first finger of the hand that burned to wear Walt Slabberts' betrothal-ring, and the abscess being ripe for the lancet, she had an extra afternoon in the week to get it attended to. She found Walt waiting at the street-corner under the lamp-post, and her heart bounded, for by their punctuality atthe trysting-place you know whether they are serious in their intentions towards you, or merely carrying on, and her other young men had invariably kept her waiting. This new one was class, and no mistake.

"Watto, Walt!" she hailed joyously.

Her Walt uttered a guttural greeting in the Taal, and displayed uncared-for and moss-grown teeth in the smile that Emigration Jane found strangely fascinating. To the eye that did not survey Walt through the rose-coloured glasses of affection he appeared merely as a high-shouldered, slab-sided young Boer, whose cheap store-clothes bagged where they did not crease, and whose boots curled upwards at the toes with mediæval effect. His cravat, of a lively green, patterned with yellow rockets, warred with his tallowy complexion; his drab-coloured hair hung in clumps; he was growing a beard that sprouted in reddish tufts from the tough hide of his jaws, leaving bare patches between, like the karroo. The Slabberts was an assistant-clerk at the Gueldersdorp Railway-Station Parcels-Office, and his widowed mother, the Tante Slabberts, took in washing from Uitlanders, who are mad enough to change their underwear with frequency, and did the cleaning at the Gerevormed Kerk at Rustenberg, a duty which involves the emptying of spittoons. Her boy was her joy and pride.

Young Walt, the true Boer's son that he was, did not entertain the idea of marrying Emigration Jane. The child of the Amalekite might never be brought home as bride to the Slabberts roof. But all the same, her style, which was that of the Alexandra Crescent, Kentish Town, London, N.W., and her manners, which were easy, and her taste in dress, which was dazzling, attracted him. As regards their spoken intercourse, it had been hampered by the Slabbertian habit of pretending only a limited acquaintance with the barbarous dialect of England. But a young man who conversed chiefly by grunts, nudges, and signs was infinitely more welcome than no young man at all, and Emigration Jane knew that the language of love is universal. She had sent him a lovely letter in the Taal making this appointment, causing his pachydermatous hide to know the needle-prick of curiosity. For only last Sabbathshe had spoken nothing but the English, and a young woman capable of mastering Boer Dutch in a week might be made useful in a variety of ways—some of them tortuous, all of them secret, as the Slabbertian ways were wont to be.

He advanced to her, without the needless ceremony of touching his hat, eagerly asking how she had acquired her new accomplishment?

But the brain crowned by the big red hat that had come from the Maison Cluny, and cost a hundred francs, and had been smartened up with a bunch of pink and yellow artificial roses, and three imitation ostrich-tips of a cheerful blue, did not comprehend. Someone who spoke the Taal had written for her. The bilingual young woman who was to be of such use to Walt had only existed in his dreams. And yet—the disappointing creature was exceeding fair.

"Pity you left your eyes be'ind you, Dutchy!" giggled Emigration Jane, deliciously conscious that those rather muddy orbs were glued on her admiringly.

The hair crowned by the screaming hat was waved and rolled over the horsehair frame she had learned to call a "Pompydore"; the front locks, usually confined in the iron cages called "curlers," frizzled wonderfully about her moist, crimson face. She had on a "voylet" delaine skirt, with three bias bands round the bottom, and a "blowse" of transparent muslin stamped with floral devices. Her shoes were of white canvas; her stockings pink and open-worked; her gloves were of white thread, and had grown grey in the palms with agitation. One of them firmly grasped a crimson "sunshyde," with green and scarlet cherries growing out of the end of the stick.

The young Dopper warmly grasped the other, provoking a squeal from the enchantress.

"Mind me bad finger! Lumme! you did give us a squeeze an' a' arf."

"If I shall to hurt you I been sorry, Miss!" apologized the Slabbert.

"All righto, Dutchy!" smiled Emigration Jane. "Don't tear your features." She bestowed a glance of almost vocal disdain upon a Kaffir girl in turkey-red cottontwill, with a green hat savagely pinned upon her woolly hair. At another ebony female who advanced along the sidewalk pushing a white baby in a perambulator she tossed her head. "Funny," she observed, "when I was 'ome I used to swaller all the tales what parsons kep' pitchin' about that black lot 'aving souls like me an' you. When I got out 'ere, an' took my fust place at Cape Town, an' 'eard the Missis and the Master continual sayin', 'Don't do this or that, it ain't Englishwomen's work; leave it to the Caffy,' or 'Call the 'Ottintot gal,' I felt quite 'urt for 'em. Upon me natural, I did! But when I knoo these blackies a bit better, I didn't make no more bones. Monkeys, they are, rigged up in brown 'olland an' red braid, wot 'ave immytated 'uman beings till they've come to talk langwidge wot we can understand, and tumble to our meanings. 'Ow do you like me dress, Walty dear? An' me 'at? That chap what passed with the red mustash said to 'is friend as I looked a bit of fair all right, and no mistake. But I'd rather 'ear you say so nor 'im if you 'ad enough English to do it with. Wot do I care about the perisher along of you?"

It was hard work to talk for two, and keep the ball of courtship rolling after the approved fashion of Kentish Town, when the slouching young Boer would only grunt in reply, or twinkle at her out of his piggish eyes. But Emigration Jane had come out to South Africa, hearing that places at five shillings a day were offered you by employers, literally upon their knees, and that husbands were thick as orange-peel and programmes on the pit-floor of the Britanniar Theayter, 'Oxton, or the Camden Varieties on the morning after a Bank Holiday. She had left her first situation at Cape Town, being a girl of spirit, because her mistress had neglected to introduce her to eligible gentlemen acquaintances, as the pleasant-spoken agent at the Emigrants' Information Office in Cheapside, the young gentleman of Hebrew strain, whose dark eyes, waxed moustache, and diamond tie-pin had made a deep impression upon the susceptible heart of his client, had assured Jane the South African employer would take an early opportunity of doing. The reality had not corresponded with the glowing picture. The employer hadfailed in duty, the husbands-aspirant had not appeared. Ephemeral flirtations there had been, with a postman, with a trooper of the Cape Mounted Police, with an American bar-tender. But not one of these had breathed of indissoluble union, though each had wanted to borrow her savings. And Emigration Jane had "bin 'ad" in that way before, and gone with her bleeding heart and depleted Post Office Savings-book before the fat, sallow magistrate at the Regent's Road County Court, and winced and smarted under his brutal waggeries, only to learn that the appropriator of her womanly affections and her fifteen sovereigns had already three wives.

The brute, the 'artless beast! Emigration Jane wondered at herself, she did, as 'ad bin such a reg'ler soft as to be took in by one to whom she never referred in speech except as "That There Green." That she softened to him in her weaker moments, in spite of his remembered appetite for savings and his regrettable multiplicity of wives, gave her the fair hump. That something in the expression of this new one's muddy eyes recalled the loving leer of "That There Green," she admitted to herself. Womanly anxiety throbbed in the bosom, not too coyly hidden by the pneumonia blouse, as the couple passed the gilded portals of a public bar, and the Slabberts' elbow was thrust painfully into her side, as its owner said heavily:

"Have you thirst?"

She coyly owned to aridity, and they entered the saloon, kept by a Dutchman who spoke English. Two ginger-beers with a stick of Hollands were supplied, and the stick of Slabberts was as the rod of Moses to the other stick for strength and power. But as Emigration Jane daintily sipped the cooling beverage, giggling at the soapy bubbles that snapped at her nose, the restless worm of anxiety kept on gnawing under the flowery "blowse." Too well did she know the ways of young men who hospitably ask you if you're thirsty, and 'ave you in, whether or no, and order drinks as liberal as lords, and then discover that they're short of the bob, and borrow from you in a joking way.... Her heart bounded as the Slabberts put his hand in his pocket, saying:

"Wat kost het?"

The Dutch bar-keeper, who seemed to know Slabberts, answered in English, looking at Emigration Jane:

"Half a dollar."

Half a dollar is South African for eighteenpence. Slabberts rattled something metallic in his trousers-pocket, and said something rapidly in the Taal. The Dutch bar-keeper leaned across the counter, and said to Emigration Jane:

"Your young man has not got the money."

They were all, all alike. A tear rose to her eye. She bravely dried it with a finger of a white cotton glove, and produced her purse, an imitation crocodile-leather and sham-silver affair, bought in Kentish Town, where you may walk through odorous groves of dried haddocks that are really whiting, and Yarmouth bloaters that never were at Yarmouth, and purchase whole Rambler roses, the latest Paris style, for threepence, and try on feather-boas at two-and-eleven-three, plucked from the defunct carcase of the domestic fowl. She paid for the drinks with a florin, and it was quite like old times when Slabberts calmly pocketed the sixpence of change. The bar-keeper leaned over to her again, and said, surrounding her with a confidential atmosphere of tobacco and schnaps:

"He is a good man, that young man of yours, and gets much money. He means to give you a nice present by-and-by."

Her grateful heart overflowed to this friendly patronage. She showed the bar-keeper her gathered finger, and said it did 'urt a treat. She expected it would 'urt worse before Dr. de Boursy-Williams—"'adn't 'e got a toff's name?"—'ad done with it.

"You go to that Engelsch doktor on Harris Street, eh?" said the bar-keeper, spitting dexterously.

"Sister Tobias—that's the nun wot 'ousekeeps at the Convent—give me a order to see 'im, to 'ave me finger larnced," explained Emigration Jane. "Ain't 'e all right?"

"Right enough," said the bar-keeper, winking at the Slabberts, and adding something in the Taal, that provoked chuckles among the bystanders and called forth a fine displayof neglected teeth on the part of the personage addressed. "There are plenty other Engelsch will be wishing to be as right, oh, very soon! For De Boursy-Williams, he has sent his wife and his two daughters away on the train for Cape Town yesterday morning, and he has gone after them that same night, and he has left all his patients to the Dop Doctor."

"Some red-necked baboons are wiser than others," said the Slabberts in the Taal, and there was a hoarse laugh, and the humorist turned his big heavy body away, and became one of a crowd of other Dutchmen, who were, in veiled hints and crooked allusions, discussing the situation across the Border. Emigration Jane was not sensitive to the electricity in the atmosphere. She knew no Dutch, and was perfect in the etiquette of the outing, which, when the young woman has been supplied with the one regulation drink, stands her up in the corner like an umbrella in dry weather as long as her young man is a-talking to 'is pals.

"So," the bar-keeper went on, "if you shall want that bad finger of yours looked to, you will have to wait until the Dop Doctor wakes up. He is a big man, who can drink as much as three Boers.... He came in this morning to get drunk, and you shall not wake him now if you fire off a rifle at his ear. But he will get up presently and shake himself, and then he will be quite steady; you would not guess how drunk he had been unless you had seen.... He is over there, sleeping on that table in the corner, and it will be very bad for the man who shall wake him up. For, look you, that Dop Doctor is a duyvel. I have seen him break a man like a stick between his hands for nothing but cutting up a thieving monkey of a little Kaffir with the sjambok. And he took the verdoemte thing home where he lives, they say, and strapped up its black hide with plaster, and set its arm as if it had been a child of Christians. But every Engelschman is mad. Groot Brittanje breeds a nation of madmen."

The saloon got fuller and fuller. The air solidified with the Taal and the tobacco, and other things less pleasant. It was not the hour for a crowd of customers, but nobody had seemed to be working much of late. They were allTransvaalers and Free Staters, tradesmen of the town, or Boers from outlying farms, and not a man there but was waiting a certain signal to clear out and leave Gueldersdorp to her fate, or remain in the place on a salary paid by the Republics as a spy. The English customer who came in knew at one whiff of the thick atmosphere that it was unhealthy, and if the man happened to be alone, he ordered, and paid, and drank, and went out quickly. If he happened to be with friends, he pointedly addressed his conversation to his countrymen, and left with a certain degree of swagger, and without the appearance of undue haste.

Once the swing-doors of the saloon opened to admit a short, spare, hollow-chested, dapper young Englishman, whose insignificant Cockney countenance was splashed with orange-coloured freckles of immense size. Between his thin anæmic lips dangled the inevitable cigarette. And Emigration Jane, toying with the dregs of her tumbler, recognized the pert, sharp, sallow face seen over the sleeve of a large burgher's outstretched arm. With some trouble she caught the eye of the short, pale young man, and he instantly became a red one. To reach her was difficult, but he dived and wriggled his way across the saloon, wedging his frail person between the blockish bodies with a cool address that reminded her of the first night of a "noo show" at the Camden "Theayter," and the queue outside the gallery door.

"'Ullo, 'ullo! Thought I reckonised you, Miss." He touched his cheap imitation Panama with swaggering gallantry, and winked. "But seeing you eight sizes more of a toff than what you were when I previously 'ad the pleasure, I 'esitated to tip you the 'Ow Do."

She tossed her imitation ostrich plumes in joyous coquetry.

"As if I didn't know wot you're after. Garn! You only wants to know if I acted on the stryte about ..."

His projecting ears burned crimson.

"Well, an' suppose I do. Did she——"

"Did she wot?"

"You pipe well enough. Did she 'ave it?"

"Ain't you anxious?"

"Tyke it I am anxious. Did she? No cod?"

"Did she git your letter wot you put in the box o' choc's? O' course she did, Mister. Wot do you tyke me for? A silly looney or a sneakin' thief?"

"I'll tell you what I tyke you for. A jolly little bit of English All Right. Say! Do you think ..." The prominent Adam's apple jutting over the edge of the guillotining double collar worked emotionally. "Think she'll send an answer, eh?"

"Reckon she will; you watch out an' see!"

"You fust-clarss little brick!"

"Garn!"

"I mean it. Stryte. Next door to a angel—that's wot you are. She's the angel. Tell 'er I said so—that's if you can, you twig? And say that when I 'eard that nearly all the gay old crowd o' pupils 'ad gone away, day before yesterday, I could 'a blooming well cut me throat, thinkin' she'd gone too. Becos' when I swore in for the Town Guard, it was with the idear—mind you rub that in!—of strikin' a blow for Beauty as well as for Britanniar, twig?" The thin elbow in the tweed sleeve nudged her, provoking a joyous giggle.

"I'm fly, no fear. Are you to 'ave a uniform, an' all like that?"

His face fell. "The kit don't run to much beyond a smasher 'at an' puttees, but they're the regular Service kind, an' then there's the bandolier—an' the gun. She ain't the newest rifle served out to Her Majesty's Army, not by twenty years. Condemned Martini, a chap says, who's in the know—an' kicks like a mule when I let 'er off—made me nose bleed fust time I tried with blank. But when we gets a bit more used to each other, it 'll be a case of bloomin' Doppers rollin' over in the dust, like rock-rabbits. Don't forget to tell 'er as wot I said so."

"Why ... ain't she a Dutchy 'erself? She wrote a letter for me in their rummy lingo to my young man!"

"Cripps!" He stared in dismay. "Blessed if I 'adn't forgot. But if an Englishman marries a foreigner," he swelled heroic, "that puts 'er in the stryte runnin'. And 'art an' 'and I'm 'ers, whenever she'll 'ave me! Tell 'erthat—with a double row of crosses from W. Keyse! And—canyou remember a bit o' poetry?" He recited with shamefaced rapidity:

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