hed that youth. But Stride
was not responsive. He avoided showing his antipathy, and was conscious
of feeling galled that his partner, Robson, was behind the secret of it.
Yet he need not have been, for the tactful North-countryman never by
word or wink let drop that he possessed the slightest knowledge of the
same even to him.

The accommodation was somewhat crowded, of necessity. Verna declined an
invitation to use one of the rooms within the house. The perpetual
yowling of the Minton nursery, heard through partitions of paper-like
thinness, might as well have been in the same room. So she elected to
sleep in the spider, on the ground that it was cooler. The men sat
smoking in a group, with an occasional adjournment to the bar, then
turned in anywhere and at any time as they felt sleepy. The horses were
all brought within the enclosure and securely made fast.

"What have you been doing about sentry-go, Minton, up till now?" said
Ben Halse, after every one was pretty well asleep.

"Oh, I don't know we've thought much about it," was the devil-may-care
answer. "I've got a couple of pups here--them rough-haired curs you see
yonder at the back. They'll raise Cain enough before any one's within
two miles of us, you bet. Come and have a last nightcap--what d'you
say, Mr Denham?"

"Oh, I don't know. Done well enough already. However, one more."

Both Denham and his host were hard-headed men, moreover, they knew that
the said "one more" wouldn't hurt them, in view of the scheme which each
and both were mutually, though tacitly, hatching.

"This is a pretty silly way of running a laager, Denham," said Ben
Halse, with infinite contempt, when the two were alone together. "Why,
on the tack these boobies are going the whole of this show is in
Sapazani's hand, and _we_ don't want that, eh?" significantly,
forgetting for the moment that the owner was outside what he and Verna
were not. "I propose that we take a turn at watching outside, one each
side of the _scherm_."

"I was thinking just about the same thing myself," was the answer.

Hour followed hour. Both men, wide enough awake, had taken up their
positions. Occasionally they would meet, and exchange a word or two.
In the strong starlight the loom of the hills and the dark hang of
forest were distinguishable, then towards morning a pale fragment of
moon rose. Denham, sitting among the low thorn-bushes, the magazine of
his .303 fully charged, enjoyed the