looked tenderly at his treasure.
"An' she just loves me to be fondlin' her like."

"If it weren't for the Major I don't know what is to prevent us
proving the old man's theory," said Stanley, evidently harping again
on his corpses.

"Him, and the bloomin' Company! The old gentlemen sittin' on the Board
in London suddenly find that the Yankees have been snaffling a lot of
valuable trinkets and things from the ruins while they took forty
winks, and then they up and says no one's to look for anything more at
all; not even a _boney fidey_ Rhodesian, sweating in the police camp
outside the walls."

"Still, it would be a rare lark to find a corpse with gold ornaments
on it, and say nothing at all."

"And what should you be doing with the old corpse when you've taken
the gold?"

"Oh! put him in the soup!" And Stanley slid lower in his chair, with
another chuckle.

The gramophone ran down with a horrible grind, but its owner only
looked at it dully and took no notice.

"Shall I wind up again?" Moore asked.

"No, let it rip. It sounds all wrong to-night. Everything is all
wrong. The whole world gone awry. It's like being on another planet to
be out here in this wilderness at such a time. I don't believe I've
ever felt exiled before, but, begad! I do to-night. Let's turn in.
Probably he won't come now."

Moore carried his gun into one of the huts and stood it carefully
beside his little stretcher-bed. Stanley took the gramophone into
another hut, and planked it down somewhat roughly on a table,
evidently made by an amateur. Without going outside again, he shouted
"Good night," and after that no sound broke the silence, except sundry
mutterings from the Irishman, who had discovered an enormous frog
under his bed, and his beloved pointer pup inside the blankets
serenely sleeping.

All the next morning Stanley hung about the camp as one who waited,
but it was not until three o'clock that Major Carew rode slowly up to
the huts. As he dismounted, briefly acknowledging Stanley's salute,
there was a characteristic absence of all superfluous words. The
latter waited until the soldier-servant had led away the mule and
another boy relieved the officer of his water-bottle, which he always
carried himself, and then he looked hard at the thin, brown, resolute
face, with an expression in his eyes that made Carew ask shortly:

"Any news?"

"Bad news from England. I suppose you haven't heard?"

"I haven't heard anything."