she was arranging her hair preparatory to posing her hat upon it.

"Well, my dear, just think! They've discovered a Kafir boy in the
compound who has been stealing thousands of pounds' worth of diamonds
for months, and passing them to someone outside. They caught him in
the act this afternoon."

"How frightfully exciting!" Rosanne had put her hat on now, but was
still manoeuvring to get it at exactly the correct angle over her right
eye. "How did he do it?"

"He made a little tunnel from under his sleeping-bunk to the outside of
the compound wall, about a yard and a half long, and through that he
would push a parcel of diamonds by means of a stick with a flat piece
of tin at the end of it, something like a little rake and exactly the
same length as the tunnel. He always pushed a little heap of earth
through first, so as to cover the diamonds up from any eyes but those
of his confederate outside. When the confederate had removed the
diamonds, he pushed back the earth against the tin rake, which the boy
always left in place until he had another packet of diamonds ready to
put through. In this way the hole was never exposed, except during the
few moments, once a week, when the boy was putting in a fresh packet."

"But how awfully thrilling!" exclaimed Rosanne.

"Yes; isn't it? What they want to do now is to catch the confederate
who is, of course, the real culprit, for encouraging an ignorant Kafir
to steal."

"Who could it possibly be?"

"Goodness knows! Such heaps of people come inside this outer compound,
tradespeople, servants with messages, and so on. But just think of it,
Nan! Thousands of pounds' worth, and the Kafir boy only got ten pounds
for each packet he pushed through."

"Well, what would a Kafir do with thousands of pounds, anyway?" said
Rosanne, laughing irrelevantly. "I think ten pounds was quite enough."

"That's true--too much for the wretch, indeed! However, he has
confessed and told everything he could to help our people to trap the
other wretch. Unfortunately, that is not very much."

"No?"

"No; he says he has never seen the man who fetches the diamonds. The
only one he has ever seen was a man he is not able to describe because
he is so ordinary-looking, who came to his kraal in Basutoland about
seven months ago, and made the whole plan with him to come and work on
contracts of three months at a time as a compound-boy, steal as many
diamonds as he could, and pass them out