e, I
should respect his beastly secret, for _her_ sake and in _her_ interests,
and if I consider that he's putting himself forward at the risk of my--my
prospects and my hopes, I shall make use of what I know."

"You don't mean you'd split on the man!" splutters Bingo; "because, if you
do----"

"All's fair in Love and War," says Beauvayse, with a ring of defiance in
his pleasant, boyish voice, and a gleam of triumph in his beautiful sleepy
eyes. "And this is Love in War. You've put a trump card in my hand against
Saxham, whether you meant to or not, and when the time comes, I shall play
it."

He gets up and lounges away. And Captain Bingo, emitting another wailing
whistle as he slews round to stare after the tall, retreating figure with
the crisp, golden head, is sure of nothing so certainly as that Beauvayse
will play that trump card. He is repentant for having broached the
Doctor's secret as he climbs up by the narrow iron stair that leads out
upon the roof of Nixey's Hotel, to relieve his commanding officer at the
binoculars.

XXXV

You are invited, the very Sunday upon which the previously-recorded
conversation took place, to make the acquaintance of the sprightly P.
Blinders, Acting-Secretary to Commandant Selig Brounckers, Head Laager,
Transvaal Republic and Orange Free State's United Forces, Tweipans.

P. Blinders, a long-bodied, short-legged young Dutch apothecary of the
Free State, with short-sighted eyes behind hugely magnifying spectacles,
and many fiery pimples bursting through the earthy crust of him, possibly
testifying to the presence of volcanic fires beneath, had acted in the
clerkly capacity to the Volksraad at Groenfontein. When Government did not
sit at the Raad Zaal, Blinders, as calmly as any ordinary being might
have done, dispensed jalap, castor-oil, and pill-stick over the counter of
his store. These are the three heroic besoms employed by enlightened and
conscientious Boer housewives for sweeping out the interiors of their
families.

Pill-stick is rhubarb-pill in the concrete. The thrifty mother buys a foot
or so, and pinches off a bolus of the required magnitude thrice in the
year. No dosing is allowed in between; the members of the family get it
when the proper time comes round. To everyone his or her share, not
forgetting the baby.

When P. Blinders came away, he left his grandfather to keep store,
previously explaining to the aged man the difference between hydrocyanic
ac