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holes in the outer skin, and when one found a hole opposite where he had been standing, he seemed to be more amused than grateful to the good shingle. Most of the detachment, however, Private Riley excepted, gathered round the entrance shield. This shield, composed of the same materials as the walls of the blockhouse, was placed immediately in front of the doorway in such a position that men could enter by going round it on either side, but no bullets could be fired directly into the interior of the room. Its present state, indeed, had excited some surprise as soon as the light had grown strong enough for it to be seen. From about the level of the adjacent loopholes upwards the corrugated iron was perforated with scores of small holes which were so close together in the centre that they coalesced into one large gash. Through this the shingle from above had poured out into a little heap on the ground.

Nearly all the men had passed some remark on this rent when coming out of the house, but some of the more critical were not satisfied with such a casual inspection. They must needs examine the perforations and feel their edges. Naturally, therefore, it was not long before they found out to their surprise that whatever missiles had made the holes had punched them from the blockhouse and not from outside. At this discovery there was much sniggering of the

nature which is very like an unspoken innuendo, and many were the repetitions of that expressive word "Wot-o," with the emphasis on the last syllable. At last Private Jonesthe sentry who had given the alarm on the previous evening -stooped and smelt the corrugated iron. He then coughed and spat expressively.

"Violets?" asked a sympathetic onlooker.

"Cordite, Cully,

cordite,

strong as the fouling I 'aven't yet cleaned out of me bundook.1 Cordite-fruity cordite-all a blowin', all a growin'!" he continued in a falsetto costermonger's ory.

There was a general laugh from all except Riley, who still stood aloof from the glad throng. The detachment had somehow cheered up considerably since the damage to the shield had excited its interest. Soldiers are light-hearted fellows and easily roused to mirth. After more unnecessary coughing Jones again spoke in a casual tone.

"'Ow many packets of ammernition did you say you'd fired early this morning, Pullthrough, that time the sergeant giv' us the larse 'cease fire' but one-just before it began to get light?"

The moody marksman did not reply.

"I know," said Inkpen, "I made a note of it. It was forty-three packets then; and he must have fired a tidy few rounds after that."

"Yes-forty-three it was

1 Soldier's Hindustani for rifle,

and the rest. 'Owever, fair's fair, and we'll call it fortythree packets at ten rounds per. Lemme see - ten times three is thirty; ten times forty is four 'underd. Four 'underd and thirty I make it. right, all?" "That's right."

That

"Four 'underd and thirty rounds of good, Mark Five, Lee Enfield ammernition is what you loosed off larse night, Number two two ought six ought one, Private Orlbert Riley, Marksman. Have you got anything to say, me man?" The last words were a very fair imitation of a well-known phrase of the colonel commanding the battalion-the aforesaid Lobster.

Before the culprit had time to reply there was a diversion, but not a welcome one. A shout came from Riley's loophole, and a rifle was protruded and slewed round till it was pointed at the rent in the screen, its foresight not three feet from it. The shouter continued

"Why, Pull-through, you're a butcher, an 'oly Terror. From this loophole I can see the bleedin' bodies of all them pore snipers you done in. Scores of 'em! And that close, too, I can almost touch 'em with me muzzle."

"Any aasvogels?" inquired Jones, who had been told of Riley's taunt of the previous evening.

Again was Riley the only man who neither spoke nor made sound of merriment. He had evidently done his talking during the night.

"Good old Orlbert! So they told orf a special squad of snipers to pick orf our marksman, and he done in the lot? Oh dear!"

"Very satisfactory, me man! Must have got an inner every time. Not so bad at that distance. What did you make the range-two foot? And how much did you allow for wind? That sort of shooting don't give them 8 chance. It's nothing but dirty murder!"

"It's just as well," said the thoughtful Baker, "that we can't all of us be marksmen. There wouldn't be many block'ouses left in Africa. Real good shooting is a bit of a lukshury."

The men, now exceedingly cheerful, were so interested in baiting their wretched comrade that, excepting the sentry, they had not noticed that a party of mounted men had joined the stationary train, that Mother had returned, and that a heated conference had been going on for some minutes between half a dozen officers near the railway. And they were quite unaware that the sergeant-thunder on his brow

-was even now savagely striding towards them. His first words dispelled gaiety; there was no trace of the satisfied victor in them.

"Now then, you men, get a move on. Jones, you're for it.'"

"What for am I for it?"

"Givin' a false alarm. The Commandant Jakhal', coming up to go into this business in a minute."

For the first time this morn

ing Riley chuckled. To take pleasure in another's discomfiture is not a nice trait, but it was one of his. Perhaps there was in this case some slight justification.

"False alarm?" said the injured Jones; "'oo's been firing at us all night then?"

"Never you mind," was the sergeant's disgusted answer he had already taken his medicine for having sent up the rockets, down below. He then proceeded with sublime inconsequence to blurt out the information which he could no longer bottle up.

"Who's been shootin' at us? Why, one of them blarsted new mounted crowds that don't know enough to come in out of the rain. Got in front of the driving line. Blows in upon us just about dark, and never sends ahead to warn us nor anyone else. They've just discovered that the Boers hid theirselves, and broke back and got out of it the night before last. There isn't one within fifty miles."

"Was any of them hurt? Ain't Riley killed anybody?" said Jones. It was not entirely malice on his part, nor was it entirely a kind hope that no one had been killed. When one has been shooting all night, almost the first mental query is whether anything has been hit.

"Not a man, worse luck," growled the non-com. He did not mean it. He was only very sore. 'There, that's enough of it. You gave the alarm, Jones, and you're—”

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He ceased talking as if his

voice was controlled by an automatic cut-out, and stalked up to the door - shield, the damage of which he now saw at close quarters for the first time. He stared at it, then at the loophole - the marksman's loophole. He examined the shield from outside, from inside, felt the holes and, finally, as Jones had done, smelt them. And he had been talking big to that officer of the armoured train about guns, pom-poms, and a hot time! He gasped, then glared speechless at Riley.

The sound of approaching voices showed that the officers were coming up towards the house. The sergeant had to make up his mind what to do. Even had he wished to screen the culprit, which he did not, or the crime, which he did, he could not conceal the gaping chasm in the corrugated iron. It were best at any sacrifice to himself-or another-to uphold discipline. Again he glared at Riley, on the point of making him a prisoner, but uncertain as to the exact nature of the crime he had committed. With With inspecting officers close, to confine a man without any definite charge ready would be fatal.

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Good soldier as he was, the sergeant was not too well versed in what was required by the Manual of Military Law and the Rules of Procedure. Indeed it was hardly fair that

man in his position should have to compete with such matters at a moment of emergency. It was one of those occasions when a soldier's work could really have been done

"By the way, what was it you mentioned about guns having been used against you?"

The voice that replied was that of the that of the skipper of the second train, "Oh, the N.C.O. in charge, sir, was under the firm impression that the blockhouse had been hit by a shell.”

better by a lawyer. Through the visitors were now quite his mind there flashed the close behind the house, and the words Mutiny, Sedition, Insub- following words, pronounced in ordination, Conduct to the courteous accents, were quite Prejudice. At last he had it. audible. Riley had been guilty of two proper recognised crimes. He had both lost by neglect ammunition and had wilfully injured public property, to wit, shields, entrance, blockhouse, c-iron and shingle one! Though the perspiration was streaming down it, the sergeant's brow cleared considerably, and he regarded the culprit somewhat less severely. After all, a mistake was a mistake, and all of us are liable to them. It seemed a bit hard, he thought, as he gazed on the rather sulky and altogether dejected face of the marksman. He started to speak in a more kindly tone

"Riley- "then paused. Unluckily for the private,

The sergeant winced and his kindly glance crystallised into a gleam. And as the cortége, consisting of the Commandant Jakhal's Vlei, his staff, the commanders of both armoured trains, and three three depressed mounted officers on foot, brought up by a shivering wet mangy dog, appeared round the entanglement, the clarion voice of duty rang out,

"-you're a prisoner!"

IN QUEST OF A CURE.-II.

WE GO TO DEVONSHIRE.

WHEN I had recovered to some extent from the long and serious illness which followed upon my first ill-fated quest for a cure, it was to find myself almost in a new world. Circumstances had severed our connection with the Highlands, and for a time our home was anywhere and nowhere. When we "flitted" from our Northern fastnesses I was still so much of an invalid as to be very much a passive agent. Like the furniture, I was removed from one abode to another. This sounds probably a more gloomy affair than it was in reality, for in truth, despite the loss of health and the breaking of many old ties, there was much in the prospect that opened before me that appealed to my incorrigible love of adventure. Doctors insisted upon a residence in a warmer climate, or rather, not so much upon one place of residence as upon many. I was to have changes of air and scene at not infrequent intervals, and all the efforts of my family were bent upon the fulfilment of these directions.

I had always longed to see the world since the far-away nursery days, when the lonely stretch of hills rolling away to distant Bens lured me as I regarded it from behind our Highland Manse. There was no road leading that way. No one lived over there. To what did one come if one went on and on into that brown heatherclad wilderness? One of my One of my

brothers at the early age of five ran away to look, but finding the mysterious world too big and alarming, he returned before any one missed him and in time for tea. Possibly it was hunger that chased him home, for he told us afterwards that the only thing he had taken with him into the waste was a cake of soap. Why he chose this as his sole support for a pilgrimage he could not clearly recollect.

The world lay before me now, mysterious as the untravelled mountain - land of my childhood. True, I had not thought to explore it in a bath-chair, but one can seldom get what one wants precisely as one first wanted it, and it is something to have our dreams come true, even with a few disadvantages attached to them. If I had changed, the world had not. It was still my oyster. Perhaps in setting out to open it the most serious drawback to the romance of the undertaking was the invalid's necessity for method and arrangement. The true romance of the road has something haphazard about it. The happy wanderer sets out when he will and halts when the spirit moves him. He should travel on foot for choice, and be in bondage to no time-table. He should go forward always into the unknown, so that when distant spires rise upon his view he should be under the delightful necessity of inquiring what

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