ience to Saxham's nod.

"Of course, the Sisters are aware," he said, meeting the Mother's grave
glance, "that if it is quicker to drive, it is safer to walk?"

She nodded with the gay, sweet smile that had belonged to Lady Biddy.

"They know, of course. But danger is in the day's work. We do not seek it.
We are prepared for it, and it comes and passes. If one day it does not
pass without the cost of life, we are prepared for that, and God's Will
is done always."

"You are very brave," he said. It was the first time in his life that he
had used the phrase to any woman, and the words came out almost
grudgingly.

"Oh no, not brave," she told him; "only obedient." Her veil fluttered in
the hot November breeze that bore with it the heavy fetid taint from the
overcrowded trenches that ringed Gueldersdorp, and the acrid fumes of the
cordite; though the air up here on the veld was sweet compared with the
befouled atmosphere of the Women's Laager and the crowded wards at the
Hospital, in spite of all that disinfectants could do. She went on:

"And we are very grateful to you for the lift. Sister Ruperta was on duty
last night, and Sister Hilda Antony--the rosy Sister--is not as well as
she would have us believe. Ah----"

With her grave eyes screened by her lifted hand, she had been watching the
progress of the spider westward over the dun-yellow veld. Now the long
wailing notes of the headquarter bugle sounded, in slow time, the
Assembly, and in the same instant, from the Staff over the Colonel's
hotel, where the red lamp signalled danger by night and the Red Flag gave
its warning by day, the scarlet danger-signal fluttered in the breeze.
Once, twice, again, the deep bell of the Catholic Church tolled. A dozen
other bells echoed the warning, signifying danger by the number of their
iron-tongue strokes to the threatened quarter of the town.

"'Ware big gun!" called the sentries. "West quarter, 'ware!"

The Mother-Superior grew pale, for the Women's Laager, towards which the
little Boer mare was steadily trotting with the laden spider, lay in the
menaced quarter, with a bare stretch of veld between it and the Camp of
the Irregular Horse, whose white tents and dug-out shelters were
pleasantly shaded by ancient blue gums, picturesque and stately in spite
of broken boughs and foliage torn by shrapnel and seared by the chemical
fumes of bursting charges innumerable.

"Will you not go down?" Saxham asked her.

She shook her