the shooting began to grow wild, then that dense veil of
rain came down and wrapped them so closely that even the lightning could
not reveal their whereabouts to the assassins on the bank.

"Stop shooting," said Frank Muller; "the cart has sunk, and there is
an end of them. No human being can have lived through that fire and the
Vaal in flood."

The two Boers ceased firing, and the Unicorn shook his head softly and
remarked to his companion that the damned English people in the water
could not be much wetter than they were on the bank. It was a curious
thing to say at such a moment, but probably the spirit which caused the
remark was not so much callousness as that which animated Cromwell, who
flipped the ink in his neighbour's face when he signed the death-warrant
of his king.

The Vilderbeeste made no reply. His conscience was oppressed; he had a
touch of imagination. He thought of the soft fingers which had bound up
his head that morning: the handkerchief--her handkerchief!--was still
around it. Now those fingers would be gripping at the slippery stones of
the Vaal in a struggle for life, or more probably they were already limp
in death, with little grains of gravel sticking beneath the nails.
It was a painful thought, but he consoled himself by remembering the
warrant, also by the reflection that whoever had shot the people he had
not, for he had been careful to fire wide of the cart every time.

Muller was also thinking of the warrant which he had forged. He must get
it back somehow, even if----

"Let us take shelter under the shore. There is a flat place, about fifty
yards up, where the bank hangs down. This rain is drowning us. We can't
up-saddle till it clears. I must have a nip of brandy, too. Almighty!
I can see that girl's face still! the lightning shone on it just as I
shot. Well, she will be in heaven now, poor thing, if English people
ever go to heaven."

It was the Unicorn who spoke, and the Vilderbeeste made no reply, but
advanced with him to where the horses stood. They caught the patient
brutes that were waiting for their masters, their heads well down and
the water streaming from their flanks, and led them along with them.
Frank Muller stood by his own horse still thinking, and watched them
vanish into the gloom. How was he to win that warrant back without dying
his hands even redder than they were?

As he thought an answer came. For at that moment, accompanied by a
fearful thunderclap, there