we can escape
out of this wicked place with our lives, I shall be thankful. And look
here, Captain Niel, I have put up a basketful of food--bread, meat, and
hard-boiled eggs, with a bottle of three-star brandy. It may be useful
to you and the young lady before you reach home. I don't know where you
will sleep to-night, for the English are still holding Standerton, so
you won't be able to stop there, and you can't drive right through. No,
don't thank me, I could not do less. Good-bye--good-bye, miss; I hope
you will get through all right. You had better look out, though. Those
two men you have with you are very bad lots. I heard say, rightly
or wrongly, that that fat-faced man with the tooth shot two wounded
soldiers through the head after the fight at Bronker's Spruit, and I
know no good of the other. They were laughing and talking together about
you in the kitchen this morning; one of my boys overheard them, and
the Boer with the long hair said that, at any rate, they would not be
troubled with you after to-night. I don't know what he meant; perhaps
they are going to change the escort; but I thought that I had better
tell you."

John looked grave, and his suspicions re-arose, but at that moment one
of the men in question rode up and told him that he must start at once,
and so off they went.

This second day's journey was in many respects a counterpart of the
first. The road was utterly deserted, and they saw neither Boer,
Englishman, nor Kafir upon it; nothing, indeed, except a few herds of
game grazing on the ridges. About two o'clock, however, just as they had
started after a short outspan, a little incident occurred. Suddenly
the Vilderbeeste's horse put his foot into an ant-bear hole and fell
heavily, throwing his rider on to his head. He was up in a minute, but
his forehead had struck against the jawbone of a dead buck, and the
blood was pouring from it down his hairy face. His companion laughed
brutally at the accident, for there are some natures in the world to
which the sight of pain is irresistibly comical, but the injured man
cursed aloud, trying to staunch the flow with the lappet of his coat.

"_Waacht een beeche_," said Jess, "there is some water in that pool,"
and telling John to pull up she sprang from the trap and led the man,
who was half-blinded with blood, to the spring. Here she made him
kneel down and bathed the wound, which was not a very deep one, till it
stopped bleeding, and then, having fir