liking to this dare-devil youngster by reason of his pluck and
adaptability.

"I don't really see why he shouldn't go if he's keen on it, Chambers,"
he said. "The experience will do the young dog no harm, and he seems
able to take care of himself. Greenoak keeps him too much in
leading-strings. Oh, _that_," as the Inspector, with a dry laugh,
recalled a certain adventure in Vunisa's location which would have cost
our friend his life but for the shrewdness and promptitude of Harley
Greenoak. "Well, yes. But, on the whole, Sandgate and Stokes are
thoroughly reliable men, and will keep him in order. Of course, I need
know nothing about it officially, nor need you; but if he should find
his chance of slipping away after them, why, after all, he's only our
guest here, and can come and go as he chooses," concluded the
Commandant, with a twinkle in his eyes.

Harley Greenoak was away upon a critical and delicate mission which he
had undertaken as a personal favour to the Commandant. As things were
at present, he argued, his charge could come to no harm, at any rate for
a day or two, by which time he himself would be back. All of which
accounted for the comparative facility wherewith Dick had slipped away--
a facility which struck our two express-riders as strange.

Something of a friendship had grown up between Dick Selmes and Corporal
Sandgate. They were of the same age, had the same tastes, and, hailing
from adjacent neighbourhoods in the Old Country, had acquaintance in
common. On such they chatted in subdued tones, as they held on their
way rapidly through the calm beauty of the African night. So far the
said way was easy, as under the unerring guidance of Trooper Stokes they
crossed each rolling upland, mimosa-dotted and grassy. Here and there,
far-away, the mysterious dimness was relieved by the red glow of a grass
fire, or might it be the weird signal of plotting savages? Soon,
however, the ground became more rugged. They forded a small river,
rippling deep down in a thickly bushed valley, and the steeds drank
gratefully of its cool, if slightly brackish, water. Then on again.

"We must swing back again here," said Stokes, as they drew rein on top
of a ridge to loosen the girths and give the horses a quarter of an
hour's rest and feed. "There are kraals in front of us. I can smell
'em."

"The deuce you can?" said Dick, vividly interested. "I can't. You're
not getting at us, old chap, are you?"