led aside, apart from the others, into
the official privacy of the stoep-corner, began to be eloquent. He knew,
he said, that the story he had to relate would appear almost incredible,
but a soldier, a diplomat, a master of strategy, such as the personage to
whom he now addressed himself, would understand--none better--how to
unravel the tangled web, and follow up the clue to its ending in a den of
secret, black, and midnight conspiracy. A blob of foam appeared upon his
under-lip. He waved his hands, thick, short-fingered, clammy members....

"My story is as follows, sir...."

"I shall have pleasure in listening to it, Mr. Brooker, on condition that
you will do me first the favour of listening to a story of mine?"

Deferred Brooker protested willingness.

"Last night, Mr. Brooker, at about eleven-thirty to a quarter to twelve, I
was returning from a little tour of inspection"--the slight riding
sjambok the Chief carried pointed over the veld to the northward--"out
there, when, passing the south angle of the enclosure of the Convent,
where, by my special orders, a double sentry of the Town Guard had been
posted, I heard a sound that I will endeavour to reproduce:

"_Gr'rumph! Honk'k! Gr'rumph!_"

Brooker bounded in his Oxford shoes.

The face upon which he glued his bulging eyes was grave to sternness. He
stuttered, interrogated by the judicial glance:

"It--it sounds something like a snore."

"It was a snore, Mr. Brooker, and it proceeded from one of the sentries
upon guard."

"Sir ... I ... I can expl----"

"Oblige me by not interrupting, Mr. Brooker. This sentry sat upon a short
post, his back fitted comfortably into an angle of the Convent fence, his
head thrown back, and his mouth wide open. From it, or from the organ
immediately above, the snore proceeded. He was having a capital night's
rest--in the Service of his Country. And as I halted in front of him,
fixing upon him a gaze which was coldly observant, he shivered and ceased
to snore, and said":--the wretched Brooker heard his own voice, rendered
with marvellous fidelity, speaking in the muffled tone of the
sleeper--"'_Annie, it's damned cold to-night; and you've got all the
blanket._'"

"Sir ... sir!" The stricken Brooker babbled hideously.... "Colonel ... for
mercy's sake!..."

"I could not oblige the gentleman with a blanket, Mr. Brooker, but I
relieved him of his rifle and left him, to tell his picket a cock-and-bull
story of having been dr