, on him, like a vice.

"Attend, Dumela. Are they in danger now, and where? Quick, do you
hear? Quick."

"Take the shortest way to the house of the Chatterer (Trask)," he
answered, thus directly cornered. "_Au_! were there not two lives
taken, two lives! And these are two lives."

Almost flinging him from her, Beryl turned to me, and in her face, her
tone, her gesture, was a very whirlwind of apprehension, of frenzied
despair.

"Kenrick, what horses are in the stable?"

"Fortunately two--yours, Meerkat--and mine."

"Saddle them up, quick. Get your revolver, and come."

Not long did it take me to obey her behest, and indeed, no sooner had I
done so than Beryl herself appeared at the stable door, equipped for our
expedition.

Giving no further thought to old Dumela, we fared forth over the moonlit
veldt.

"My presentiment was a true one after all, Kenrick," remarked Beryl, as
we rode side by side.

"That remains to be seen," I said. "Old Dumela may have found a mare's
nest."

"No. He would not have come here at this time of night like this
without good reason. And all the time we were thanking him shabby and
ungrateful he was serving us--watching over our interests, our safety."

The short cut to Trask's lay along the bottom of a network of
intersecting kloofs, but the path would only allow of riding single
file. Beryl and I had a sharp skirmish as to who should take the lead,
but I claimed my right, and firmly stuck to it. If there was danger,
mine was the right to discover it and meet it first, and that she
recognised.

Heavens! the sickening, creeping mystery of that night ride--the weird,
boding awe of it, as we took our way through the dark gloom of
overhanging scrub, the sharp contrast of its blackness with the vivid
glare of the full moon accentuated tenfold--the ghostly cliffs frowning
down upon us, as from a scene in Dante.

Our way took us by the lower end of the Zwaart Kloof, the site of that
other tragedy--the scene, too, of my fell and fatal discovery when all
my castles in the air had melted away, when I had learned that I was
ruined, and as we entered its bushy recesses a thrill of superstitious
dread ran through me. It was an ill-omened spot--cursed and haunted
with an overshadowing of woe. Surely--surely--not again were its shades
destined to cover another tragedy--another outpouring of the cup of
horror and of evil.

I had but lately avowed my disbelief in instincts, yet