his handsome bluntish head in
acknowledgment of his master's caress. "Presently we shall be killing our
mounts to save their lives--and ours. Oats and horseflesh will keep life
in men--and in children and women.... The devil of it is, Saxham, that
there are such a lot of women."

"And seventy-five out of a hundred of them stayed out of pure curiosity,"
came grimly from Saxham.

"To see what a siege would be like. Well, poor souls, they know now! You
were going over to the Women's Laager. I'll walk with you, and say my say
as I go. I'm on my way to Nordenfeldt Fort West. Something has gone wrong
with the telephone-wire between there and Staff headquarters, and I can't
get anything through but Volapuk or Esperanto. And those happen to be two
of the languages I haven't studied." The dry, humorous smile curved the
reddish-brown moustache again. The pleasant little whistle stirred the
short-clipped hairs of it as the two men turned in the direction of the
Women's Laager, over which the Red-cross flag was fluttering, and where
the spider with the little Boer mare, picking at the scanty grass, waited
outside the earthworks. Saxham's eyes did not travel so far. They were
fastened upon a tall black figure and a less tall and more slender white
figure that were by this time halfway upon their perilous journey across
the patch of veld, bare and scorched by hellish fires, and ploughed by
shrapnel ball into the furrows whence Death had reaped his harvest day by
day.

"There goes one of the women we couldn't have done without," commented his
companion, wheeling his bicycle beside Saxham, leading the brown Waler.

"It is the Mother-Superior," Saxham said, "with her ward, Miss Mildare."

"Ah! My invariable reply to Beauvayse--you know my junior A.D.C., who
daily clamours for an introduction to Miss Mildare--is, that I have not
yet had one myself, though at the outset of affairs I encountered the
young lady under rather trying circumstances, in which she showed plenty
of pluck. I thought I had told you. No? Well, it was one morning on the
Recreation Ground. The School was out walking, a trio of nuns in charge,
and some Dutch loafers mobbed them--threatened to lay hands on the
Sisters--and Miss Mildare stood up in defence--head up, eyes blazing, a
slim, tawny-haired young lioness ready to spring. And Beauvayse was with
me, and ever since then has been dead-set upon making her acquaintance."

Saxham's blood warmed to the picture. But