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complain. A wounded she- storms, and curling into little

bear deprived of her whelps would, in temper, be angelic compared with the lady if any aspersions were made against her young.

I can see her now, in one of her not infrequent "gusty" moods, clad in her usual elegant déshabille. On Sundays she puts on black, and goes away with a few flowers and returns without them, and I conjecture that her pilgrimage is to the cemetery, and that there lie some former little O'Haras. But her "usual," commencing from below, is old heelless velvet slippers, rather a short mud-coloured petticoat just showing beneath a muddier coloured skirt, a loose-may I call it?-tea-jacket, showing no waist, and a man's hat, set carelessly athwart those scanty dusky locks, which are looped up evidently with one turn of the wrist, and that easy abandon common to her type. The whole framed in a doorway; and oh, the streams of language! all directed at poor trembling Amar Singh (I wish my servants would tremble before me !), who has not kept the hens out of the peas while he has been engaged in chopping wood at the other side of the house!

An hour after mid-day the whole of our little world, which has been chattering and clattering up and down the road and round the lake, staggering under loads, herding pack animals, or blasting on the hillside, falls a-nodding, and, half an hour later, asleep. The baby waves that with the zephyrs have been playing at

white combers all the morning, die away into a flat and glassy calm. My walnut-tree has never a whisper amongst all its leaves, and the chestnut is silent. Even the two tits are resting. Those social, wingless butterflies that have been fluttering a round of calls, borne on four pair of pattering bare feet, alone form occasional bright spots of moving colour on the lake-side road, or as they flit through tree gaps far up the opposite slope. Then, too, I fall a-dozing.

Two hours later the place wakes up with a yell, startling to the stranger, but soon recognised as our somewhat primitive method of watering the roads. This is done by a gang of coolies advancing by dervish rushes, shouting at the tops of their voices, and banging the kerosene - oil tins with which they bale the water out of the lake and cast it over the road, themselves, or any one within range. Thus do we lay our dust, and as the noise dies away in the distance the place shakes itself wide awake, and resumes the thread of existence. Comes the measured tramp of feet, with an occasional gentle boom; up the hill it comes, turning off the public on to the private road that leads into the hospital, and is now passing under my verandah. My eye, as I peep over the railing, rests on a stream of scarlet and brass moving steadily up to our main entrance. It was the big drum, in its suit of sad and rusty

The

mourning, that inadvertently me, I cannot see much of them. spoke in muffled tones. The main incident of the race band passes out of sight, pres- for troops of the garrison is, ently to be followed by the however, fairly apparent : a firing-party, white and scarlet, neck-and-neck struggle, and now beneath me, white hel- then a colossal foul near the mets, belts and slings, and post, with an inextricable scarlet coats. Their footfalls mingling of oars, and possibly cease on a subdued word of some exchange of lip. The command; wreath-bearers, and boats, however, are solid craft, one man carrying helmet and that once on a day have hung bayonet, fall out. Then all is from davits and been accusquiet, save for an uneasy tomed to rough usage. shuffling of boots on gravel. A little later the slow tramp begins again, and now I look down on the helmet and bayonet wobbling rather pitifully on the Union-jack, in company with a few poor wreaths, as Thomas Atkins is carried away on his comrades' shoulders to his last resting-place. Then, when clear of the hospital precincts, the familiar and most mournful march is heard, and that too dies away as this brightly-clad funeral procession passes out of sight, and its place is taken by a contrary stream of pleasureseekers, some on horseback, some in dandies, some on foot. These are all flowing northwards. That means that it is either to be a gymkhana or a regatta. Preferably the latter, for I can see more of it.

Regatta it is, for the verandah and tiers of seats in the club boat-house, a mile away, are already blossoming into bright colours as they are occupied by gay frocks and sunshades. There is life and movement to the eye if not the ear, and if the band were not elsewhere employed I should just be able to hear it from my seat. There are many boat-races, but as they are all rowed nearly end on to

For the other races, when the bowings and bobbings of coxswains are out of harmony with the swing of the oarsmen, I know that that event on the programme contains a note, "A lady to steer"; and when there is an immense spurt and some splashing at the beginning of a race, and a deathly languor at its conclusion, I know it is a Lady's Four. I am told that afternoon teas are absolutely incompatible with training.

Then the sun disappears abruptly over the ridge and casts my verandah into shade. During the afternoon he has been rather intrusive, and has occasionally almost dislodged me. Still I regret his abrupt departure, and the chill that his absence produces. Though he is invisible to me, he yet shines through a jagged strath overlooking the farther end of the lake, and pours his great shafts, like lime-light, on to the flats and into the boat-house, where all the fuss is and the life. Then he goes for good, and the place soon puts on its night-array, jewelled with reflected stars in the water and with many a twinkling light set so high and so steeply above me that they too might

almost be stars. "Night has a thousand eyes," in sooth. The tinkling bell of the Roman Catholic chapel hard by rings out the Angelus, and the day is done.

It is at this time that Eileen and her brothers, who have been herded indoors at sunset to avoid the damp chills of night, tune up their evening lays. These are drawn exclusively and impartially from 'Hymns Ancient and Modern and from the light operas,— the former very flat, the latter very stale, not to say unprofitable. It is a sad trial, but the windows are closed.

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"Perhaps you'd like to take the dressing off yourself, sir," says considerate Mr Phelps, who is doing his night rounds. "You'll hurt yourself less than I shall there, that's right. Now for the hot water. There! Hurting a little? Ah, that'll soon go. Good night, sir; you'll find the morphia on the little table by your bed." And so he departs, and leaves the world to darkness and to me.

I will husband my resources, i.e., the morphia and the three hours' sleep it represents, and will woo slumber unaided till midnight and then the blessed drug! She will carry me on till 3 A.M., and with luck, only a little luck, and if Carlo does not bark, till 4 A.M., and the remainder of the night will soon pass till the dawn-bird returns thanks for the beginning of another day, and I mine for the ending of another night.

The Tormentor remarked quite parenthetically, and as

if the matter was one that had almost escaped him, "Well, what say you to having it off?" He had been using all his clever brains for long in order to keep it on, and really was as disappointed as I was. Not to be outdone, I reply, "Why, certainly; it will be a good riddance of bad rubbish!"

"Well, let's see-to-day's Tuesday-when shall we say?" "The sooner the better." "To-morrow, then?"

"All right, Mr Phelps. Please see that the tables are right."

Well, it was to be quite a minor operation; still it span itself out most profusely.

Mr Phelps thought that "these two tables" would do. So he placed them together end to end, threw a measuring eye over me, and found that they would do. One of them was my dinner-table. We keep no operating tables in our establishment. It is one of many deficiencies. And, dear me, what a lot of preparations! They recommenced at 6 o'clock next morning with an intermittent stream of satellites, bearing every conceivable article connected directly or indirectly with limb-carving: lastly, a large chest, marked in ominous black, "Emergency box," staggered in and was dumped. My private wire informed me that it contained apparatus for starting a heart that would not beat under chloroformmine was beating quite fastor lungs that in moments of anaesthetical slackness refused to breathe. Also there were vessels various; towels, plenty; sponges, a large selection; hotwater, gallons of it; instru

Mrs O'Hara to put it away somewhere?"

ments, cases full of them, all D'you think you could get opened and displaying their wares. Some of the latter, indeed, were enjoying a tepid antiseptic bath, lying under water in basins, and glittering most murderously at me.

Unlike the condemned man, I was not even allowed any breakfast. Perhaps also I was not very hungry. Mr Phelps was happy in a subdued sympathetic way. Operations are so few and practice so valuable, and when one of the former comes your way, a man must make the most of it.

The Tormentor dropped in; several other tormentors dropped in, and at last all was ready.

A voice was calling me by name; far, far away-then nearer and more peremptorily “Wake up, wake up!" So I woke.

"Why, I thought you were never coming round." "Is it off?" "Yes, it's off."

"Thank goodness!"

A week's close confinement prevented further observations from my verandah, but the dawn-bird never failed me, nor did the O'Haras.

"Do you think Mrs O'Hara is very fond of that screaming parrot?" I asked Mr Phelps.

“I'm sure, sir, I don't know why she keeps the plaguey bird."

"How's the abscess-on-the liver?" I query: we allude to ourselves by our ailments.

"Ah, sir, bad-very bad. No sleep; and temperature not down for days."

"I expect that parrot disturbs him a lot at night.

"Well, I'll see what I can do, sir," says Mr Phelps, grimly. He does not like Mrs O'Hara. The parrot nuisance was abated, and though it may look cowardly shifting it on to the poor liver case, yet it must be remembered that he was quite safe and bed-ridden in an upper storey and well out of range of Johnnie's rifle. I was not.

The Carlo nuisance was also abated in a similar manner.

And on a day I stood up to resume once more my little place in the world, the world that had been going on and on all these weeks, leaving me halted unprofitably by the wayside, losing time, losing station. So much lee-way had to be made good. And yet this was a heartening thoughtperhaps, something depended on the uses that had been made of adversity. For those also serve who only stand and wait.

And how I had looked forward to this day of release! And here it had arrived; and was not I now rejoicing at leaving these surroundings reminiscent of nothing but weary days and sleepless nights? Yes, I was glad. And yet no, I was more than a little sorry. For I was about to leave behind me certain friends in adversity, therefore good friends-my verandah; the prospect from it; my two trees; the tits; last, but by no means least, that unconscious comforter, my dawnbird.

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A WEEK after Wilmot left Pretoria jail he was on the first stage in the Great Trek. The plan of campaign necessitated a visit to Smeer's farm to procure riding-horses, and a good-bye call at Rietspruit. The journey from Krugersdorp to the farm was made by Cape cart, an expensive but convenient mode of travel. Hartley carried with him a parcel of literature for Clarie, selected with a little more care than usual, thanks to the guidance of Wilmot, and sundry trifles, appreciated by the feminine mind, intended as peace-offerings to Mrs de Villiers and Hendrika. According to Boer etiquette, their acceptance might be regarded as a pledge on the part of the recipients to treat Clarie better. The same etiquette required that Clarie should not be included in the distribution of gifts, but Hartley knew that the books would be prized far above anything else. He made his offering to the enemy with some trepidation, but was rendered happy by the enthusiasm with which it was received.

He had with considerable effort composed a little farewell speech to Clarie, but when the moment came for delivering it he was overwhelmed with an awkward shyness and loss of memory. The parting took

place at the shady corner of the stoep, to which he had engineered her rather adroitly. He began by taking her hand, and in rather formal language said

"Good-bye, Clarie. It may be a long time before we see one another again, but—”

There came a pause, which Clarie filled with an interrogative "Yes?"

con

This was not in the original scheme, and the pause tinued. Perhaps it was more eloquent in its significance than the words that should have come, but refused to shape.

"I shall miss you very much," Clarie said to help him. It was his turn to say "Yes?" "I do hope this business you are on will turn out nicely."

"You may well wish that, because you have an interest in it." Hartley was right off the track, and began flounder.

"I?"

to

"Yes; you're in on the ground-floor, and, if it pans out as well as the indications promise, I'm going to do the right thing, because, you see, you've had a good deal to do with it."

Clarie expressed her surprise and incredulity.

"Yes," Hartley went on, growing bolder, though his original speech had quite evap

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