an
agriculturist, and the strange light eyes, rust-coloured like those of an
adder, and, like the ophidian's, set flush with the oddly-flattened edges
of their orbits, were at variance with the high, rounded, benevolent
temples crowned with a thinning brake of curly hair. The rapacious mouth,
with the thick scarlet lips, belonged to the eyes.

He had put on his hat again, but he swept it off in a flourishing bow, as
Mevrouw Brounckers, in high-kilted wincey, a man's hat of coarse straw
perched on her weather-beaten, sandy-grey head, came stumping down the
waggon-ladder, calling for her potatoes. What was that lazy bedelaar of a
Secretary about, and it nearly eleven of the clock? Didn't he know that
her Commandant liked his meals on time?

Mevrouw received the politeness less graciously than the potatoes. That
man with the eyes and the greedy red mouth was a woman-eater, she knew.
Not for sheep and bear would she, grandmother as she was, trust herself
in house barn alone with a klant like that. But her Commandant had uses
for him, the twinkling-eyed, soft-mannered, big rogue. She watched him
walking off with P. Blinders, for whom she entertained a distaste grounded
on the knowledge that no good ever came of these double-tongued Free
Staters.

And this one could _write_ in the accursed shibboleth of England as well
as in the Taal. She shook her head as the potatoes rattled into the big
pot hanging over the fire. And he walked out on Sundays with the young
German woman who was maid to the refugee-widow staying at Kink's Hotel,
and who never showed her nose inside the Gerevormed Kerk, the godless
thing! or went out except by bat-light. Of that one the Mevrouw Brounckers
had her opinion also. And time would show who was right.

Meanwhile, Van Busch and P. Blinders, who had left the dorp behind them,
and strolled up the almost dry bed of a sluit leading up amongst the
hills, conversed, in Sabbath security from English artillery, and
reassuring remoteness from Dutch eavesdroppers. And their theme was the
German drummer's refugee-widow who never went to kerk.

Van Busch, who found it helpful in his business never to forget faces, had
met her on the rail, months back, travelling up first-class from Cape
Town. Early in October it was, while the road was still open. And men who
kept their eyes skinned went backwards and forwards and round and about,
getting the hang of things, and laying up accurate mental notes, because
the