is, which had caused her many and many a
long hour of uneasiness and apprehension, had betrayed him to a
barbarous death, and with it that other. The cruel irony of it, too,
would burst upon her. He had avenged himself in his very death--had
broken her heart.

Had Tom Carhayes been the only one to fall, it is probable that Eanswyth
would have mourned him with genuine--we do not say with durable--regret.
It is possible that she might have been afflicted with acute remorse at
the part she had played. But now all thoughts of any such thing faded
completely from her mind, obliterated by the one overwhelming, stunning
stroke which had left her life in shadow until it should end.

Then the Rangers had returned, and from the two surviving actors in the
terrible tragedy--Payne and Hoste, to wit--she learned the full
particulars. It was even as she had suspected--Tom's rashness from
first to last. The insane idea of bushbuck hunting in a small party in
an enemy's country, then venturing across the river right into what was
nothing more nor less than a not very cunningly baited trap--all was due
to his truculent fool-hardiness. But Eustace, knowing that her very
life was bound up in his--how could _he_ have allowed himself to be so
easily led away? And this was the bitterest side of it.

To the philosophic and somewhat cynical Payne this interview was an
uncomfortable one, while Hoste subsequently pronounced it to be the most
trying thing he had ever gone through in his life.

"Is there absolutely no hope?" Eanswyth had said, in a hard, forced
voice.

The two men looked at each other.

"Absolutely none, Mrs Carhayes," said Payne. "It would be sham
kindness to tell you anything different. Escape was an impossibility,
you see. Both their horses were killed and they themselves were
surrounded. Hoste and I only got through by the skin of our teeth. If
our horses had `gone under' earlier it would have been all up with us,
too."

"But the--but they were not found, were they? They may have been taken
prisoners."

Again the two men looked at each other. Neither liked to give utterance
to what was passing through his mind. Better a hundredfold the
unfortunate men were dead and at rest than helpless captives in the
hands of exasperated and merciless savages.

"Kafirs never do take prisoners," said Payne after a pause. "At least,
never in the heat and excitement of battle. And it is not likely that
Carhayes or