nd smiled amiably down into the
indignant eyes behind the spectacles. Then he said, with his most candid
look and simplest lisp:

"No tricks, brother; all fair and above-board. Ask the Commandant whether
Van Busch is square or not? He knows that the hundred and fifty was paid
you honestly on his account, and that I kept but fifty for myself. And
you're not the chap to bilk him of his due. Sure no, you'll never do that,
never! Go and see him now, and settle up. I had a talk with young Schenk
Eybel this morning, and he says the answer to the screeve you wrote to the
Officer in Command at Gueldersdorp--to patch up an exchange of the
Englishwoman for that slim kerel of a Boer's son they got their claws on
at the beginning of the siege--has come in under the white flag this
morning. Schenk Eybel has a little plan he can't put through without Walt
Slabberts, he says. Loop, brother. You'll find the old man on his grey
pony near the Field Hospital."

The eyes behind the spectacles whirled in terror. The ex-apothecary
faltered:

"What--what is this you say? The money paid me on the Commandant's
account--when it was to be a secret between us.... Foei, foei! This is
unfair. And suppose I have spent it, how shall I replace it? Do you wish
to ruin an honest man?"

Van Busch grinned, and P. Blinders gave up hopelessly. At least, it seemed
so, for he turned sharp round, and trotted off with sorrowfully-drooping
black coat-tails, in search of the meek grey pony and the terrible old
man.

But the front view of the Secretary displayed a countenance whose pimples
radiated satisfaction, and spectacles that were alight with joy.
Much--very much--would P. Blinders have liked to have kept that hundred
and fifty, but his fear had proved greater than his desire.

He had paid every tikkie of the money faithfully to Brounckers, and his
hands were metaphorically clean, and his neck comfortably safe. He was the
poorer by a hundred and fifty pounds, but the richer in wisdom and
experience; and--he chuckled at the thought of this--in the joy of knowing
himself, in postscripts appended to those despatches of the
Englishwoman's, to have poked sly sarcasm at the British Lion. Whose spiny
tail P. Blinders imagined to be lashing, even then, at the prick of the
goad.

For another thing, very pleasant to think of, he had successfully pitted
the cunning behind his giant spectacles against the superior villainy of
Mr. Van Busch of Johannesburg.