at. We are just on the left of
Hetmeyer's Kopje."

"Good. Let Glossop occupy the kopje with his squadrons, while we take
the trenches. If we can force them back on their second line of
trenches, and keep them there till our supports come up, we shall be
all right."

"When shall we begin, sir?" asked Barry.

"Give orders to dismount now. Get the horses in the lee of the kopje,
and we'll see what Brother Boer thinks of us after breakfast."

Rudyard took out a repeating-watch, and held it in his closed palm. As
it struck, he noted the time.

His words were abrupt but composed. "Ten minutes more and we shall have
the first streak of dawn. Then move. We shall be on them before they
know it."

Barry Whalen made to leave, then turned back. Rudyard understood. They
clasped hands. It was the grip of men who knew each other--knew each
other's faults and weaknesses, yet trusted with a trust which neither
disaster nor death could destroy.

"My girl--if anything happens to me," Barry said.

"You may be sure--as if she were my own," was Rudyard's reply. "If I go
down, find my wife at the Stay Awhile Hospital. Tell her that the day I
married her was the happiest day of my life, and that what I said then
I thought at the last. Everything else is straightened out--and I'll
not forget your girl, Barry. She shall be as my own if things should
happen that way."

"God bless you, old man," whispered Barry. "Goodbye." Then he recovered
himself and saluted. "Is that all, sir?"

"Au revoir, Barry," came the answer; then a formal return of the
salute. "That is all," he added brusquely.

They moved forward to the regiment, and the word to dismount was given
softly. When the forces crept forward again, it was as infantrymen,
moving five paces apart, and feeling their way up to the Boer trenches.

Dawn. The faintest light on the horizon, as it were a soft, grey
glimmer showing through a dark curtain. It rises and spreads slowly,
till the curtain of night becomes the veil of morning, white and kind.
Then the living world begins to move. Presently the face of the sun
shines through the veil, and men's bodies grow warm with active being,
and the world stirs with busy life. On the veld, with the first
delicate glow, the head of a meerkat, or a springbok, is raised above
the gray-brown grass; herds of cattle move uneasily. Then a bird takes
flight across the whitening air, another, and then another; the meerkat
sits up and begs breakfast