of
the inhabitants of the Gold-Reef Town in the event of an attack by a
hostile force.

Also the military armament of the place was about to be materially
increased.

And yet up to the little frontier town upon which so much depended not a
single modern gun had been despatched.

An easy prey had the little town upon the flat-topped hill, set in the
middle of a basin, proved to the Boer General and his commandos but for
one thing. For weeks after the bursting of the first shell over
Gueldersdorp three sides of the beleaguered town were so many open doors
for the enemy. Only upon the threshold of each door stood Fear, and
guarded and held the citadel.

III

That hard taskmaster, Satan, is sometimes wonderfully indulgent to those
who serve him well. While Bough, the keeper of the tavern, was yet turning
about the open letter in his thick, short, hairy hands, weighing the
chances attending the sending of it against the chances of keeping it
back, the woman who served as mistress of the place thrust her
coarsely-waved head of yellow bleached hair and rouge-ruddled face in at
the room door, and called to him:

"Boss, the sick toff is doing a croak. Giving up the ghost for all he's
worth--he is. Better come and take a look for yourself if you don't
believe me."

Bough swore with relief and surprise, delayed only to lock away the
letter, and went to take a look. It was as he hoped, a real stroke of luck
for a man who knew how to work it.

Richard Mildare--for Bough knew now what had been the name of the
Englishman: Captain the Hon. Richard Mildare, late of the Grey
Hussars--was dead. No hand made murderous by the lust of gold had helped
him to his death. Sudden failure of the heart is common in aggravated
cases of rheumatic fever, and with one suffocating struggle, one brief
final pang, he had gone to join her he loved. But his dead face did not
look at rest. There was some reflection in it of the terror that had come
upon him in the watches of that last night.

Bough stayed some time alone in the room of death. When he came out he was
extremely affable and gentle. The woman, who knew him, chuckled to herself
when he met the Kaffir serving-maid bringing back the child from an airing
in the sun, and told her to take it to the mistress. Then he went into the
bar-room to speak to the Englishman's Boer driver.

Leaning easily upon the zinc-covered counter he spoke to the man in the
Taal, with which he was per