s. And he had a buoyant, boyish, disarming,
chivalrous way with him. If he desired a woman's lips he would always
begin by kissing the hem of her skirt.

Had I not known what I did, I, an easy-going sort of Christian
temperamentally inclined to see the best in my fellow-creatures, and,
as I boastingly said a little while ago, a trained judge of men, should
doubtless have fallen, like most other people, under the spell of his
fascination. But whenever I met him, I used to look at him and say to
myself: "What's at the back of you anyway? What about that business at
Vilboek's Farm?"

Now this is what I knew--with the reservation I have made above--and to
this day he is not aware of my knowledge.

It was towards the end of the Boer War. Boyce had come out rather late;
for which, of course, he was not responsible. A soldier has to go when
he is told. After a period of humdrum service he was sent off with a
section of mounted infantry to round up a certain farm-house suspected
of harbouring Boer combatants. The excursion was a mere matter of
routine--of humdrum commonplace. As usual it was made at night, but
this was a night of full dazzling moon. The farm lay in a hollow of the
veldt, first seen from the crest of a kopje. There it lay below,
ramshackle and desolate, a rough wall around; flanked by
outbuildings--barn and cowsheds. The section rode down. The stoep led
to a shuttered front. There was no sign of life. The moonlight blazed
full on it. They dismounted, tethered their horses behind the wall, and
entered the yard. The place was deserted, derelict--not even a cat.

Suddenly a shot rang out from somewhere in the main building, and the
Sergeant, the next man to Boyce, fell dead, shot through the brain. The
men looked at Boyce for command and saw a hulking idiot paralysed by
fear.

"His mouth hung open and his eyes were like a silly servant girl's
looking at a ghost." So said my informant.

Two more shots and two men fell. Boyce still stood white and gasping,
unable to move a muscle or utter a sound. His face looked ghastly in
the moonlight. A shot pierced his helmet, and the shock caused him to
stagger and lose his legs. A corporal rushed up, thinking he was hit,
and, finding him whole, rose, in order to leave him there, and, in
rising, got a bullet through the neck. Thus there were four men killed,
and the Commanding Officer, of his own accord, put out of action. It
all happened in a few confused moments. Then