nd the look of alarm upon the woman's
face seemed to deepen.

"Strange that. Why, I even recognised the man who was riding with him.
It looked like Hermanus Delport."

There was no mistaking the effect this time. She looked downright
hideously scared. It could not be, she reiterated. He must have been
mistaken. And then to cover her confusion she turned away to a
cupboard, and, unlocking it, brought out a decanter of Boer brandy,
which she placed upon the table.

"_Maagtig, kerel_!" cried one of the Dutchmen, seizing the bottle
gleefully, and pouring out a copious _soepje_. "It is true you must
have been seeing _spoeks_. The _poort_ is said to be haunted, you
know."

Colvin fell into the humour of the thing seemingly, and replied in like
bantering vein. But he was thinking the while, and thinking hard. The
fear evinced by Gideon Roux' wife would not be manifested by a stolid
practical Boer woman under the mere circumstances of a neighbour having
come to press her husband for the payment of a by no means ruinous debt.
It was something deeper than that. It was more like the demeanour of a
naturally respectable and law-abiding person who was made the
involuntary sharer of some grim and terrible secret, which she dared
neither to divulge nor even hint at. It set him thinking, and the
burden of his thoughts was that his return home should be effected as
much as possible by daylight, and as far as possible by a different
route.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now, Gideon Roux was no fool of a Boer, neither was his confederate
Hermanus Delport, consequently, having disappeared over the neck in the
direction of the former's home, they proceeded to execute a backward
manoeuvre. Leaving their horses standing about twenty yards the other
side, and well out of sight, they stealthily retraced their steps until
they could gain a point which commanded a view of Gert Bondelzwart and
the two horses under his charge. Not long had they been there before
they saw all they wanted to see. They saw Colvin emerge from the cave
under the krantz, and descend to where he had left his servant. But
they did not wait until he had rejoined the latter. Mounting their
horses, they sent those astonished animals along at a break-neck gallop,
which brought them to the homestead fully twenty minutes earlier than
the expected visitor. It took them less than five to execute their next
move,