s
of shame and fury with his own. Meanwhile exaggerated accounts of the
English defeat had reached the town, and, amongst other things, it was
said that Captain Niel had been shot dead. One man who came in stated
that he saw him fall, and that he was shot through the head. This
Mrs. Neville heard with her own ears, and, greatly shocked, started to
communicate the intelligence to Jess.

As soon as it was daylight, as was customary with her, Jess had gone
over to the little house which she and John occupied, "The Palatial," as
it was called ironically, and settled herself there for the day. First
she tried to work and could not, so she took a book that she had brought
with her and began to read, but it was a failure also. Her eyes would
wander from the page and her ears strain to catch the distant booming of
the big guns that came from time to time floating across the hills.
The fact of the matter was that the poor girl was the victim of a
presentiment that something was going to happen to John. Most people of
imaginative mind have suffered from this kind of thing at one time or
other in their lives, and have lived to see the folly of it; and there
was more in the circumstances of the present case to excuse indulgence
in the luxury of presentiments than as usual. Indeed, as it happened,
she was not far out--only a sixteenth of an inch or so--for John was
very _nearly_ killed.

Not finding Jess in camp, Mrs. Neville made her way across to "The
Palatial," where she knew the girl sat, crying as she went, at the
thought of the news that she had to communicate, for the good soul had
grown very fond of John Niel. Jess, with that acute sense of hearing
which often accompanies nervous excitement, caught the sound of the
little gate at the bottom of the garden almost before her visitor had
passed through it, and ran round the corner of the house to see who was
there.

One glance at Mrs. Neville's tear-stained face was enough for her. She
knew what was coming, and clasped at one of the young blue gum trees
that grew along the path to prevent herself from falling.

"What is it?" she said faintly. "Is he dead?"

"Yes, my dear, yes; shot through the head, they say."

Jess made no answer, but clung to the sapling, feeling as though she
were going to die herself, and faintly hoping that she might do so. Her
eyes wandered vaguely from the face of the messenger of evil, first up
to the sky, then down to the cropped and trodden veld