the yet more thrilling escape
of the Lady War Correspondent attached to H.I.M. forces on the Frontier:

Who got clean away, mind you, with complete information of the strategic
plans of the General in command of the enemy's laagers, sewn inside her
corsets or hidden in her shoes!

Bingo little dreamed of the definite plan seething under his little wife's
transformation coiffure. It had matured since her meeting on the
railway-journey from Cape Town with an interesting personality. A big,
brown-bearded Johannesburger, with light queer eyes, who had been reticent
at first, but more interesting after his confidence had been gained.

Van Busch he had named himself. Of the British South African War
Intelligence Bureau. That man knew how to value women. And he had proved
them at what he called the risky game.

"With nerve and josh like yours, and plenty of money for palm-oil ..." Van
Busch had said, and winked, signifying that there were no lengths to which
a woman of Lady Hannah Wrynche's capabilities might not go. And he had
slipped into her hand a card scrawled with an address where he might be
got at _in case_ ...

The pencilled oblong of soiled pasteboard was yet in a secret compartment
of her handbag. By letter addressed care of W. Bough, Transport Agent and
Stock-dealer, Van Busch was to be communicated with at a farmstead some
thirty miles north.

The spice of adventure her palate craved could be had by corresponding
with Van Busch through the man Bough. After that---- Well! She had her
plan ...

She tied her husband's white tie, took him by the ears, kissed him warmly
on each side of his large pink face, glowing with blushes evoked by her
unwonted display of affection, and led him away to dinner, her mental
vision seeing prophetic broadsheets papering the kerbs of Piccadilly, the
ears of her imagination making celestial melody of those raucous yells:

"Speshul Edition! Hextry Speshul Edition! 'Ere y'are, sir; on'y a
'a'penny. SPESHUL!"

XXVII

For nearly two months, from dawn until dark, Gueldersdorp had squatted on
her low-topped hill in a screaming blizzard of shrapnel and Mauser
bullets. Never a town of imposing size or stately architecture, see her
now a battered hamlet of gaping walls, and shattered roofs, and wrecked
chimneys; staring defiance through glassless windows like the blind
eyeholes in the mouldered House that once has held the living thought of
Man. From dawn until dark the ancie