herself was somewhat unresponsive. She could shoot people, if put to
it, but her preferences were all the other way. As it was she was
heartily thankful she had not killed the man, and that his wounds were
not mortal.

"I'm afraid he'll only recover for Jack Ketch, then, Miss Selwood,"
rejoined the sergeant. "They're all booked for the `drop,' to a dead
certainty, for that other affair. What? Hadn't you heard of it?"

And then came out the story of the wholesale butchery in which these
miscreants had been concerned. There was no difficulty whatever as to
providing their identity. The Government rifles, stolen from the
convict guards when these were overpowered, spoke for themselves. And
with the horror of the recital vanished the reactionary glow of pity
which had begun to agitate the feminine breast on behalf of the
prisoners. Hanging was too good for such a set of fiends.

Breakfast over, the police troopers set out with their prisoners,
handcuffed, and extra well secured with reims; for the bush bordering
the road was thick, as we have seen, and the men in desperate case. The
two wounded ruffians were left behind until such time as they should be
in a condition to travel--to recover, as the police sergeant had truly
put it, for Jack Ketch; and the dead body of Muntiwa was taken to a
distance, and built up in a kind of impromptu morgue of stones to
protect it against wild animals and carrion birds. For the district
surgeon would have to make a post-mortem, and a report, as by law
required; a duty which that functionary might, or might not, hurry
himself to fulfil.

We may as well anticipate a few months, and finally dismiss the
surviving scoundrels from our narrative. The wounded ones being
sufficiently convalescent, the whole lot--for the man who escaped at
Sunningdale was eventually taken--were put upon their trial for the
murder of the Hottentot family. Two were accepted as Queen's evidence,
and their testimony, as confirmed by the murdered man's dying
deposition, established that Muntiwa and Klaas Baartman, the Bushman
Hottentot, were the principal actors in the diabolical business--though
there was not much difference in degree between the guilt of any of
them, except that Booi, the other Kafir, had endeavoured strenuously to
dissuade his fellow-scoundrels from the murder of the woman and
children. Accordingly, the two men who had saved their lives by turning
Queen's evidence, were put back to