pses among 'em, will shed their grave-clothes, and rise up
and do the deeds of living men before, to quote Levison, this month is
out. Never take it for granted that a man is dead until the grass is
growing high over his bare bones, and don't make too sure even then!
Because to-day I saw such dry bones move--and it's an instructive if an
uncanny sight."

"Whose were the bones, Colonel?" called out the handsome young aide at the
bottom of the table.

The host, his thin, brown fingers busy at the clipped moustache, was
listening to the Mayor of Gueldersdorp, who sat upon his right. He
withdrew his attentive eyes from that stalwart sportsman's broad, ruddy
countenance, to glance smilingly at the fair, handsome face, and reply:

"Whose? Well, up to the present they have belonged to the Dop Doctor."

"That man!" The Mayor, in the act of taking another slice of the roast,
looked round as at the mention of a name familiar, shrugging his portly
shoulders. "Surely you know who the fellow is, Colonel? He drifted up here
from Cape Colony three years ago. A capable--confoundedly capable man,
handicapped by a severe muscular strain," the Mayor's twinkling eye
heralded the resurrection of an ancient jest--"contracted in lifting a
cask of whisky--a glass at a time!"

White teeth flashed in alert tanned faces. The schoolboy laugh went round
the table; then the Babel of talk rose up again. Most of these men were
quite young ... their seniors barely middle-aged, not a man but was what
they themselves would have termed both "fit" and "keen." They had wrought
for many days in the erection of sand-bag defences, in the digging of
trenches, in the drilling of Baraland Irregulars and Rifle Volunteers and
the newly-enrolled Town Guard. This was the pleasant social time of lull
before the storm, and they were not to get many more good dinners or
peaceful nights in bed for a long siege to come. They did not show
outwardly the tension of strung nerves that waited, as the whole world
waited, for the echo of the first shot, rattling amongst the low hills to
the south. Nor did it occur to them that there was anything heroic or
dramatic in their quiet unaffected pose. Gathered together upon one little
spot of border earth destined to be the vital, tragic, throbbing centre of
great events and tremendous issues, actions glorious, and deeds scarce
paralleled upon the page of History, let us look upon them, well-groomed,
well-bred, easy-mannered, chee