. As though the Powers deigned to reward an act of
virtue on the very night of its performance, he was posted by his picket
in the shadow of the high corrugated iron fence of the tree-bordered
tennis-ground behind the Convent, as "Lights Out" sounded from the camp of
the Irregulars, beyond the Railway-sheds and storehouses.

It was glorious to be there, taking care of Her, though it would have been
nicer if one had been allowed to smoke. The moon of William's
passion-inspired verse was not shining o'er South Africa's plain upon this
the very night for her. It was dark and close and stiflingly hot. A
dust-wind had blown that day, and the suspended particles thickened the
atmosphere, to the oppression of the lungs and the hiding of the stars. He
knew his picket posted a quarter of a mile away on the other side of the
Cemetery; his fellow-sentry was on the opposite flank of the Convent. He
was a stout, middle-aged tradesman, with a large wife and a corresponding
family, and it wrung the heart of W. Keyse to think that a tricky fate
might have placed that insensible man on the side where Her window was!
Through the boughs of the peach and orange trees, heavily burdened with
unripe fruit, you could get an occasional glimpse of whitewashed brick
walls, darkened by the outline of shuttered oblongs here and there. And
Imagination could blow her cloud of fragrant vapour, though tobacco were
denied you.

"They're all Her windows while she's there behind them walls," was the
reflection in which W. Keyse found comfort.

She was not there. She was at that moment being kissed on the stoep of the
Du Taine homestead near Johannesburg, by a young officer of Staats
Artillery, to whom she had agreed to be clandestinely engaged, though Papa
Du Taine had other views.

W. Keyse was spared this tragic knowledge. But if the moon, shining
beautifully over the Du Taine gardens and orange-groves, had chosen to
tell tales!

It was still--still and quiet; a blue radiance of electric light burned
here and there; at the Staff Office on the Market Square, and at other
centres of purposeful activity. Aromatic-beer cellars and whisky-saloons
gave out a yellow glare of gas-jets; the red lamp of an apothecary showed
a wakeful eye. Gueldersdorp sprawled in the outline of a sleeping turtle
on her squat hillock of gravelly earth and sand. In smoke-coloured folds,
closely matching the lowering dim canopy of vapour brooding overhead, the
prairie spread ab