go on: and that if--"

"If he came to you with--with a message, sir, that he has just received,
you would kick him out of your presence."

"Humph!" said the Colonel sternly. "Just this minute, sir, you said of
me what you believed to be the truth; but now you have been saying what
you must know to be false.--Pray, what was the message Moray?" he added,
turning to me.

There was only one thing to do, and I did it, giving Moriarty's message
to the end.

"The insolent, conceited idiot!" said the Colonel scornfully. "You need
not go back to him with my answer; but if you come across him again and
he asks what I said, you can tell him this: that at the first
opportunity I shall hand him over to my superior officers, as one of Her
Majesty's subjects found with arms in his hand fighting against the
British force after taking service with her enemies, and doing his best
to impress Englishmen to serve in the same ranks.--Mr Denham, I should
like a few words with you in the morning."

He turned upon his heel and strode heavily away, with his spurs clinking
loudly and the guard at the end of his scabbard giving a sharp _chink_
every now and then, as, field-glass in hand, he climbed to the top of
the wall to take a look round at the positions of the enemy before the
evening closed in.

"Well," said Denham at last, looking the while as if all the military
starch had been taken out of him, "you've done it now."

I could keep back my laughter no longer.

"Somebody has," I cried merrily.

"Yes," he said dolefully; "somebody has. Oh, I say, Val, you oughtn't
to have told tales like that."

"What?" I cried. "How could I help it?"

"Well, I suppose you couldn't," said my companion. "But there never was
such an unlucky beggar as I am. What did he want to come upon us just
at that moment for? Oh dear! oh dear! and I got to face him to-morrow
morning! I say, can't we do something to put it off--something to make
him forget it?"

"Impossible," I said.

"Oh, I don't know; try and think of a good dodge--a sortie, or doing
something to make the Boers come on to-night. If we had a jolly good
light he'd forget all about it, and I shouldn't hear any more about the
miserable business. Here, what can we do to make the Boers come on? I
might get killed in the set-to, and then I should escape this awful
wigging."

"Who ought to go and see the doctor now?" I said. "Who's going mad?"

"I am, I believe, old fellow; and e