'Suppose the two scouts told them that our party was approaching, and they resolved to plant an ambush in the road to the laager; would they not be shrewd enough to avoid leaving traces of their passage?'

"Your suppositions are these, Miss Bell: the footprints in the mud were not left by harmless travellers, but by scouts. The scouts crossed, not before Duplatz left that note on the table, but afterwards. They could read Dutch. The main force, warned by them, observed that the traces of its passage would be seen, and they swam over. This may be all truth, but there is not a single fact, I think, to hang it on. To relieve your mind, however, I will take a few men and ride down the bank.'

'Oh, thank you! Of course it is silly, but I shall be so much easier when my fancies are disproved.'

Within an hour Albertyne came back full gallop, care in his face. Miss Bell was watching. I knew it!' she cried, clasping

her hands. Oh, my poor father!'

A

'You are making a luxury of terrors,' said he sternly. certain force of Kaffirs has swum over apparently five or six miles below; but it was two days since at least, and there is not the slightest reason to think that they went towards the laager. Their tracks follow the stream.'

Miss Bell showed no signs of comfort. You are going to inspan and follow?' she asked feverishly.

"Yes. Pray get into your waggon.'

It was eleven o'clock when the troop got under way. Said one man to another, 'This is a fool's errand we're on, comrade, look at it how you will. If old Yates has got cotched he's dead, and if he ain't he's in laager, and what good can we do any way?

'The blooming laager can take jolly good care of itself, and so could we at Zuurfontein. But with them waggons in tow we shan't reach Stockenstrom till hours after dark. There was all of five thousand Kaffirs crossed the Harte, Jan says, as seed the tracks.'

'A chap in love is never a strategist, specially when he's got his girl in camp. Ye see, Ally's bound to look after her old father, and there ain't enough of us to leave a garrison at depot. So here we are on the hop in an unknown country, just inviting the enemy to tread on the tails of our coats. For why? Because our captain's in love!'

'Bless the women in their proper places, but dom them when they get into camp! There'll be wigs in the green to-night, I bet.' Bell overheard this conversation, and others like it.

But half the distance had been traversed when the advance

party came racing back. Naked white bodies they saw ahead, lying on the veldt. Albertyne arrayed his party for defence, and rode out alone. Three corpses lay there; one of them had been Yates. At this point two deep sluits, flood-channels, approached each other; Albertyne saw the banks torn down in a rush of naked feet. There the ambush had been laid, and thence had the Kaffirs fired a volley.

It was no moment to tell the daughter what had happened, or to think of her distress. Albertyne fetched up half a dozen men with spades, and buried the dead as quickly as might be. Yates had just been covered when Miss Bell came running over the slope, dishevelled, panting, her eyes wild. Albertyne met her with no gentle grip, forced her back, heedless of screams and struggles, lifted her into the waggon, and enjoined Wood to keep her there.

'God knows how I pity you, madam,' he said, but the lives of these men and yours are in my care!'

When the hasty graves were full, he ordered the waggon to be turned, but no one obeyed. Some men started at full speed back Wood shouted, Get out Miss Bell; her horse is ready!

at once.

6

No one here's going to fight for Yates's "pack"!"

Albertyne knew it was the prudent course. 'Let every man load himself with rations!' he cried, clambering into the waggon. Miss Bell lay on the mattress, sobbing piteously, hardly conscious. She made small resistance when he lifted and handed her down. Wood placed the girl before Albertyne on the saddle, and the impatient troop started. In two hours they saw Zuurfontein. Many Kaffirs were gathered round the house, hurrying to and fro with bundles. 'Charge!' Wood cried, but that was a long gallop. The blacks fired and ran; they had slight loss, but the threat discomfited their plans. Five minutes later house and granary would have been ablaze, for they were filled with dry reeds and grass.

Albertyne carried Miss Bell indoors, made her a bed of reeds, and laid his rugs upon it. A few words of deepest sympathy he murmured, and hurried out. The homestead was fortified of course, rudely but strongly; not once nor twice had its weak points been revealed by test of war and corrected. Kaffirs still remained in sight, moving on the crests of the low, barren hills, and this stubbornness told that the main body was coming up. Before dark the besieged were ready at every point. As he passed the house door from time to time, Albertyne looked in, to see Miss Bell always crying and moaning on her couch. It would have been mockery to offer her food.

The night passed quietly, but single shots rang out far away. In the grey dawn an outlying sentry fired and ran in; before he had reported, flashes gleamed through the light mist in every quarter bullets rang and pattered. The garrison lay close and had no hurt, replying only when they marked a foe's ambush. The sun rose swiftly, and revealed a multitude of Kaffirs crouched behind little heaps of sand and pebble. The fusillade might have daunted young soldiers, but most of those attacked had experience of fighting quite otherwise formidable. Not one enemy left

cover.

'Every third man come to get breakfast,' cried Albertyne, passing along the line. When we're all full, we'll tumble out on those skulkers, and give 'em-' He reeled and fell, hit in the chest.

They carried him within and laid him on the reeds, Miss Bell paying no attention. But she seemed to recover consciousness as the rude fellows departed with kindly words, threw back her hair, and sat up. Albertyne smiled at her sadly.

You too? Oh, I would have given my life for either!'

I think the story may close here. An hour afterwards the Kaffirs withdrew in haste, and scouts pushed out met the Transvaal force advancing. Its leaders brutally rejoiced to hear Yates's death, which closed their accounts. They did not want the English party, which the dead man had raised as a bodyguard for the maintenance of his interests. It was plain enough, indeed, that the two nationalities could not work together, for they got to fisticuffs over the drink of welcome. As the diggers had received three months' pay in advance, they were not unconsoled on the homeward march.

In miserable plight Albertyne reached Bloemfontein. Miss Bell wrote to his mother at Caledon, and she presently arrived, at grave, stately, silent woman of the old Calvinistic stock. When her son's health allowed, she examined Yates's books, and set his complex affairs in order; and as soon as Albertyne could travel, she took him back to Caledon, never, as she hoped, to leave that quiet, old-world nook: for Miss Bell went with them, and the pair were married last January.

F. BOYLE.

358

"The Wearing of the Green.'

BY BASIL, AUTHOR OF LOVE THE DEBT.'

A long, long kiss, the kiss of youth and love.-BYRON.

WE shall not undertake to say that, if Maurice had not met Norah accidentally in the neighbourhood, he would have kept to his resolution to avoid Clonard. The eagerness of the moth to singe its wings grows the more frenzied as it nears the flame; and we are not at all sure that Maurice could have resisted a desperate impulse to rush upon his certain fate on finding himself within a bowshot of Norah. He would, of course, have disguised this weakness to himself (if he had yielded to it) under the fear of offending Miles by passing his very gate without calling. But he was spared the humiliation of breaking once again his resolution of avoiding Norah by the accidental meeting he had hoped for in the background of the mind, where, as in a subsoil, the seeds which strike and spring and bear fruit are generally hidden.

Norah, having brought what comfort and comforts she could to the Morony household, was returning without, for a wonder, a single thought of Maurice in her mind. The hopeless wretchedness of the kindly and patient people all round oppressed her with the weight and horror and sense of helplessness of a nightmare. What little she could do (and all she could she did) to relieve them seemed but

Upon the rack of this tough world
To stretch them out longer.

And in her present depressed and nervous state their unmitigable misery weighed upon her with tenfold force. Especially did the

gaunt horror of poor Mrs. Morony's dead face, which she had to gaze upon on pain of giving deep offence, haunt her in the darkening twilight with an ever-deepening terror, till she feared to look back, or on either side, or even up and straight before her, so utterly unstrung was she. She sped homewards, rather running than walking, with her eyes upon the ground a few feet in advance, so that she almost ran against Maurice before she was aware of any one's approach.

'Norah !'

Any sudden sound would have startled her in her present unnerved state. She stopped and staggered back, drawing in her breath in a startled sob.

'Maurice!' she answered, in a tone which seemed to him to have a good deal more of fear than of joy in it, as indeed it had, for she was thoroughly scared for a moment.

'You startled me,' she added apologetically, conscious of the unflattering trepidation of her tone. But his mind was so prepossessed with the certainty of her love for Reid Summers that he construed her confusion and fear at sight of him into a shrinking from the reproach of his presence. Therefore he answered with bitter politeness :

'I am very sorry, but I had no idea of meeting you,' which his chilling tone interpreted into 'no wish to meet you.'

'But you were coming to us?' she asked falteringly.

'No; I came upon Land League business. I was commissioned to pay some money to clients of theirs in this neighbourhood.' He particularised his mission to make her clearly understand that it was mere business brought him here.

6 But you will come to us afterwards?'

'No, thank you; I haven't time.' His tone was so freezing that it was impossible for poor Norah to say one of the hundred speeches she had revolved over and over in her mind in the last two days to make to him upon their first meeting. She was beginning to doubt now if there were any misunderstanding to clear up, and to remember how prone Nancy was to exaggerate and even to invent pleasant things. Therefore, there was an awkward silence of a few seconds, which each interpreted to mean that the other felt the meeting an embarrassment. Then Norah said timidly:

'Have you quite recovered from your burns?'

"Oh, quite, thank you; they were nothing.'

'I haven't thanked you yet for my life, Maurice,' she said, with a quaver in her low sweet voice. I hadn't the time, or the chance, or or the courage,' she faltered, meaning that his