t higher."

This was done, and then the pair bent down quickly over the sacks, each
uttering an angry ejaculation.

"Why, it's sheer mischief, sergeant," cried Lennox. "Done with a sharp
knife evidently."

For the light now revealed something which the darkness had hitherto
hidden from their notice. Another sack had been ripped up, apparently
with a sharp knife, from top nearly to bottom. Another was in the same
condition, and a little further investigation showed that every one had
been cut, so that, on the farther side where all had been dark, there
was a slope of the yellow grain which had flowed out, leaving the sacks
one-third empty.

"Well, this is a rum go, sir," said the sergeant, scratching his head
with his unoccupied hand. "They must have got a couple of sackfuls
away."

"But why slit them up, when they could have shouldered a couple and
carried them off?"

"Can't say, sir," said the sergeant.

Lennox turned back to the doorway, and his companion followed with the
light.

"Hold it lower," said Lennox, and the man obeyed, showing the grain they
had first noticed lying scattered about, while a little examination
further showed the direction in which those who had carried it off had
gone, leaving sign, as a tracker would call it, in the shape of a few
grains which had fallen from the loads they carried.

"Follow 'em up, sir?" said the sergeant. "It would be easy enough if it
keeps like this."

"Yes," said Lennox. "We should know then if it was the Boers."

The man stepped forward with the door of the lantern opened and the
light held close to the ground, making the bright yellow grains stand
out clearly enough as he went on, though at the end of a minute instead
of being in little clusters they diminished to one here and another
there, all, however, running in one direction for some fifty yards; and
then the sergeant stopped.

"Seems rum, sir," he said.

"You mean that the Boers would not have been going in this direction?"

"That's so, sir. I'm beginning to think that it couldn't have been
them."

"I'm glad of it," said Lennox, "for I want to feel that we can trust
them. Who could it have been, then?"

"Some of the friendly natives, sir, I hope," replied the sergeant.

"But they wouldn't have come this way, sergeant. It looks more as if
some of our own people had been at the corn."

"That's just what I was thinking, sir," replied the sergeant, "only I
didn't want to say it."