perishin' Dopper," spluttered the
ghastly little man in bandoliers behind the weapon. "Put up them dirty big
'ands o' yours, or, by Cripps! I'll let 'er off, you sneakin',
match-talkin' spy!"

The arms of Slabberts soared as the tongue of Slabberts wagged in
explanation.

"This is assault and battery, Meister, upon a peaceful burgher. You shall
answer to your officer for it, I tell you slap. Voor den donder! Is not a
young man to light his pipe as he talks to a young woman without being
called spy by a verdoemte sentry! Tell him, Jannje, that is all I did
do!"

W. Keyse felt a little awkward, and the rifle was uncommonly heavy. The
Slabberts felt it tremble, and thought about taking his hands down and
reaching for that Colts six-shooter he kept in his hip-pocket. But though
the finger wobbled, it was at the trigger, and Walt was not fond of risks.

"Tell him, Jannje!" he spluttered once more.

She had not needed a second bidding.

As the domestic hen in defence of her chicken will give battle to the
wilde-kat, so Emigration Jane, with ruffled plumage, blazing, defiant
eyes, and shrill objurgations, couched in the vernacular most familiar to
their object, hurled herself upon the enemy.

"You narsty little brute, you! To up and try an' murder my young man. With
your jor about spies! Sauce! I'd perish you, I would, if I was 'im! Off
the fyce o' the earth, an' charnce bein' 'ung for it! Take away that gun,
you silly little imitation sojer--d' you 'eer?"

The weapon was extremely weighty. W. Keyse's arms ached frightfully.
Perspiration trickled into his eyes from under the tilted smasher. He felt
damp and small, and desperately at a loss. And--as though in malice--the
moon looked out from behind a curtain of thick, dim vapour, as he said
with a lordly air:

"You be off, young woman, and don't interfere!"

Gawd! she knew him in spite of the smasher hat. Her rage burst the
flood-gates. She screeched:

"You!... It's you. 'Oo I done a good turn to--an' this is 'ow I gits it
back?" She gasped. "Because you're arter one young woman wot wouldn't be
seen dead in the syme street wi' you ..."

Pierced with the awful thought that the adored one might be listening, W.
Keyse lifted up his voice.

"Sentry.... 'Ere!... Mister!" he cried despairingly, "You on the other
side, can't you hear?"

In vain the call. The stout fellow-townsman of W. Keyse, comfortably
propped in an angle of the opposite fence, the bulk of the Con