sembling the
Boer's loomed up in the distance.

Oh, shame on her, the doubly false! But--but--she had never been so orful
'appy. Oh, what a queer thing was Love! If only---- But never, never would
he. She was mistaken.

There came a moment when W. Keyse swerved from the path of single-hearted
devotion to the unseen but ever-present wearer of the golden pigtail.

As Christmas drew near, and Gueldersdorp, not yet sensible of the
belly-pinch of famine, sought to relieve its tense muscles and weary
brains by getting up an entertainment here and there, W. Keyse escorted
his beloved--by proxy, as usual--to a Sunday smoking-concert, given in a
cleared-out Army Service Stores shed, lent by Imperial Government to the
promoters of the entertainment.

Oh, the first delicious sniff of an atmosphere tinged with paint and
acetylene from the stage-battens and footlights, and so flavoured with
crowded humanity as to be strongly reminiscent of the lower troop-deck in
stormy weather, when all the ports are shut and all the hatches are
battened down! The excess of brilliancy which must not stream from the
windows had been boarded in, and a tarpaulin was drawn over the skylight,
in case the gunners of Meisje should be tempted to rouse the monster from
her Sabbath quiet, and send in a ninety-four-pound shell to break up an
orgy of godless Englanders. But the stuffiness made it all the snugger.
You could fancy yourself in the pit of the Theayter of Varieties, 'Oxton,
or perched up close to the blue starred ceiling-dome of the Pavilion, Mile
End, on a Saturday night, when every gentleman sits in shirt-sleeves, with
his arm round the waist of a lady, and the faggots and sausage-rolls and
stone-gingers are going off like smoke, and the orange-peel rains from the
upper circle back-benches, and the nut-cracking runs up and down the
packed rows like the snapping of the breech-bolts in the trenches when the
fire is hottest....

Ah! that brought one back to Gueldersdorp at once.

Meanwhile, a pale green canvas railway-truck cover, marked in black,
"Light Goods--Destructible," served as a drop-curtain. Another, upon which
the interior of an impossible palace had been delineated in a bewildering
perspective of red and blue and yellow paint-smudges, served as a general
back-scene for the performance.

The orchestra piano had been wounded by shell-fire, and had a leg in
splints. Many members of the crowded audience were in strapping and
ba