k masses flecked with the white of waggon-tilts, and sometimes giving
out the dull gleam of iron or the sparkle of steel, were to choose this,
W. Keyse's first night on guard, for an attack! Even to the inexperience
of W. K. the sand-bagged earthworks built about Gueldersdorp, the
barricades of trek-waggons and railway-trucks blocking up the roads
debouching on the veld, the extending lines of trenches, the watchdog
forts, the sentinelled pickets, the noiseless, continually moving patrols,
all the various parts of the marvellous machinery of defence, controlled
by one master-hand upon the levers, would count for nothing against that
overwhelming onrush of armed thousands, that flood of men dammed up above
the town, and waiting the signal to roll down and overwhelm her,
and----Cripps! what a chance to make a glorious, heroic splash in Greta's
sight! Die, perhaps, in saving her from them Dutchies. To be sure, she,
divine creature, was a Dutchy too. But no matter--a time would come ...

Confident in the coming of that time, W. Keyse took the brown rifle
tenderly from the corner, and replaced the meagre little looking-glass
upon the yellow chest of drawers. In the act of bestowing a final glance
of scrutiny upon his upper lip, whose manly crop had unaccountably
delayed, he caught sight of a cheap paper-covered book lying beside the
tin candlestick whose tallow dip had aided perusal of the volume o'
nights. The red surged up in his thin cheeks as he picked up the thing.
There were horrible woodcuts in it, coloured with liberal splashes of red
and blue and yellow, and the print contained matter more lurid still. Vice
mopped and mowed and slavered, obscene and hideous, within those gaudy
covers.

He looked round the mean, poor, ugly room, the volume in his hand; a
photograph of the dubious sort leered from the wall beside the bed....

"If they rushed us to-night, an' I got shot in the scrap, an' they brought
me back 'ere, dyin', and She came ... an' saw _that_ ...!" His ears were
scarlet as he dashed at the leering photograph and tore it down. Oh, W.
Keyse, it is pitiful to think you had to blush, but good to know you had
not forgotten how to. There was a little rusty fireplace in the room. W.
Keyse burned something in it that left nothing but a feathery pile of
ashes, and a little shameful heap of mud in the corner of a boy's memory,
before he hurried to the Town Guardhouse, where other bandoliers were
mustering, and fell in