t can be nothing else;" adding to myself, "a
good job too, for now there will be no postmortem on old
Marnham."

Who fired the place I never learnt. It may have been the
Basutos, or Marnham's body-servant, or Footsack, or a spark from
the kitchen fire. At any rate it blazed merrily enough
notwithstanding the marble walls, as a wood-lined and thatched
building of course would do. On the whole I suspected the boy,
who may very well have feared lest he should be accused of having
had a hand in his master's death. At least it was gone, and
watching the distant flames I bethought me that with it went all
Heda's past. Twenty-four hours before her father was alive, the
bondservant of Rodd and a criminal. Now he was ashes and Rodd
was dead, while she and the man she loved were free, with all the
world before them. I wished that I could have added that they
were safe. Afterwards she told me that much the same ideas
passed through her own mind.

Dismounting I led the horses into the old kraal through the gap
in the wall which once had been the gateway. It was a large
kraal that probably in bygone days had held the cattle of some
forgotten head chief whose town would have stood on the brow of
the rise; so large that notwithstanding the trees I have
mentioned, there was plenty of room for the cart and horses in
its centre. Moreover, on such soil the grass grew so richly that
after we had slipped their bits, the horses were able to fill
themselves without being unharnessed. Also a little stream from
a spring on the brow ran within a few yards whence, with the help
of Kaatje, a strong woman, I watered them with the bucket which
hung underneath the cart. Next we drank ourselves and ate some
food in the darkness that was now complete. Then leaving Kaatje
to stand at the head of the horses in case they should attempt
any sudden movement, I climbed into the cart, and we discussed
things in low whispers.

It was a curious debate in that intense gloom which, close as our
faces were together, prevented us from seeing anything of each
other, except once when a sudden flare of summer lightning
revealed them, white and unnatural as those of ghosts. On our
present dangers I did not dwell, putting them aside lightly,
though I knew they were not light. But of the alternative as to
whether we should try to escape to Lydenburg and civilization, or
to Zululand and savagery, I felt it to be my duty to speak.

"To put it plainly