th a row of round, staring eyes, the nose
belonging to each pair being flattened eagerly against the glass.

"Oh!" exclaimed Lady Hannah, dropping the blind in consternation at this
manifestation of public interest. A snorting chuckle from the malignant
Trudi fanned the little lady's waning courage into flame. She crossed the
room and turned the door-handle.

The door was locked from the outside, the key having been removed to
accommodate the eye of Mevrouw Kink, who reluctantly removed it to unlock
the door, and announce that Myjnheer Van Busch had asked to see his
sister, as she ushered the visitor in.

Sisters are not sensitive as a rule to subtle alterations in the regard of
their brothers, but the German drummer's refugee-widow could not but read
in the face and demeanour of her relative a perceptible diminution of
interest in a woman who had no more money.... He kept on his broad-brimmed
hat and pulled at his bushy whiskers as he exchanged a palpable wink with
Trudi, who was accustomed, when the gracious lady's brother called, to
retire with her knitting behind the shiny American cloth-covered screen
that coyly shielded the washstand from a visitor's observation.

Those flat, light eyes of the visitor's twinkled oddly as Lady Hannah's
indignant whisper told of the missing footgear and the vanished revolver,
and her conviction that the screened knitter was the active agent in their
spiriting away.

"You believe the girl's slewed on you, eh, and that things are going to
pan out rough? Well, sure, that's a pity!" The big man lolled against the
deal table, covered with a cloth reproducing in crude aniline colours,
trying to the complexion, but gratifying to the patriotic soul of Mevrouw
Kink, the red, white, and blue stripes of the Vierkleur, with the green
staff-line carried all round as an ornamental border. "And I'd not wonder
but you were right." He stuck his thumbs in his belt, and asked, with his
hatted head on one side and a jeering grin on his bold red mouth: "So,
now, and what did you think to do?"

Lady Hannah controlled an impulse to knock off the big man's
broad-brimmed felt, and even smiled back in the grinning face.... One very
little lady can hold a great deal of anger and resentment without spilling
any over, if she is thoroughly convinced that it would be imprudent as
well as useless to display either.

"As you gather, I intend returning to Gueldersdorp to-morrow at latest. I
shall not take my