prisoner, am certainly
under restraint. For how much money down will you undertake to extricate
me from this position, and convey me back to Gueldersdorp?"

He shook his head, and for once the scent of gain did not rouse his
predatory appetite. He was wondering how it should never have occurred to
him before that the scared little white-faced thing might have fallen into
kindly hands, and been nursed and cockered up and made a lady of? He was
puzzled to account for her remembering the name that had belonged to the
man whose grave was at the foot of the Little Kopje. He was conscious of
an itching curiosity to find out for his friend Bough whether it really
was the Kid or no? What was the little fool of a woman saying in her
shrill voice?

"It would be burning your boats, I am quite aware. But if it _pays_ to
burn them----" she suggested, with her black eyes probing vainly in the
shallow ones.

He roused himself.

"A thousand pounds, English. You've not the money here?"

"No."

"Or a cheque?"

Her laugh jangled contemptuously.

"Do you Boer spies carry cheque-books--upon Secret Service?"

"I am no Boer, but an honest, square-dealing Britisher. How often have I
to tell you that? Do you suppose you are a prisoner here because I slewed
on you? Wrong, by God! Perhaps I kept things back a bit for fear you would
cut up, as women do, and go into screeching-fits. Sure now, that's what
any man would have done." His tone of injury was excellently feigned, and
his lisp was simplicity itself. "And to call me a dirty spy, when I got
you first-hand information, and ran your letters through to Gueldersdorp,
at the risk of my blooming neck.... Well, you'll be ashamed when you get
back there and see those letters, that's what you will, sure!"

"The letters got through--yes. But did they get through in time to be of
use?"

The little she-devil suspected the truth. He stroked his whiskers and
scraped his foot upon the floor, and said in his blandest lisp:

"They got through in useful time. I'll kiss the Book and swear it, if you
want me."

How deal with a knave like this, who popped in and out of holes like a
rabbit, and wriggled and writhed like a snake? Lady Hannah knew an immense
yearning for the absent Bingo, husband of limited intellectual capacity,
man of superior muscular development, doughty in the use of that primitive
weapon of punishment, the doubled human fist.

"In useful time? Useful Gueldersdorp time or us