, who had served through three
former wars--campaigns lasting for years, not for months or weeks--their
arms, too, consisting of muzzle-loading weapons, against an enemy more
daring and warlike than the Kafirs of to-day. These had come through
safe and sound, why not he?

Thus philosophising, she had striven not to think too much--to hope for
the best. But there was little enough in that border settlement to
divert her thoughts from the one great subject--apart from the fact that
that one subject was on everybody's tongue, in everybody's thoughts.
She had found an interest in the two young girls, in reading with them
and generally helping to improve their minds, and they, being bright,
well-dispositioned children, had appreciated the process; had responded
warmly to her efforts. But in the silent night, restless and wakeful,
all sorts of grisly pictures would rise before her imagination, or she
would start from frightful dreams of blood-stained assegais and hideous
hordes of ochre-painted barbarians sweeping round a mere handful of
doomed whites standing back to back prepared to sell their lives dearly.

Every scrap of news from the seat of war she had caught at eagerly. She
had shuddered and thrilled over the account of the battle with Shelton's
patrol and its stirring and victorious termination. Every movement of
the Kaffrarian Rangers was known to her as soon as it became public
property, and sometimes before; for there were some in an official
position who were not averse to stretching a point to obtain such a
smile of welcome as would come into the beautiful face of Mrs Carhayes,
if they confidentially hinted to her a piece of intelligence just come
in from the front and not yet made known to the general public. She had
even tried to establish a kind of private intelligence department of her
own among some of the Kafirs who hung around the settlement, but these
were so contradictory in their statements, and moreover she began to
suspect that the rascals were not above drawing pretty freely upon their
imaginations for the sake of the sixpences, or cast-off clothes, or
packets of coffee and sugar, with which their efforts were invariably
rewarded. So this she discontinued, or at any rate ceased to place any
reliance on their stories.

She had heard from her husband once or twice, a mere rough scrawl of
half a dozen lines, and those chiefly devoted to explaining that camp
life--made up as it was of patrols an