them. Pound shares are
nineteen shillings to-day. They'll be between three and four pounds, a
week after I get back."

"And when shall you go?" the boy asked.

"Directly I get a man out here I can trust and things are fixed with his
Majesty the King of Bekwando! We'll both go then, and you shall spend a
week or two with me in London."

The boy laughed.

"What a time we'll have!" he cried. "Say, do you know your way round?"

Trent shook his head.

"I'm afraid not," he said. "You'll have to be my guide."

"Right you are," was the cheerful answer. "I'll take you to Jimmy's, and
the Empire, and down the river, and to a match at Lord's, and to Henley
if we're in time, and I'll take you to see my aunt! You'll like her."

Trent nodded.

"I'll expect to," he said. "Is she anything like you?"

"Much cleverer," the boy said, "but we've been great chums all our life.
She's the cleverest woman ever knew, earns lots of money writing for
newspapers.

"Here, you've dropped your cigar, Trent."

Trent groped for it on the ground with shaking fingers.

"Writes for newspapers?" he repeated slowly. "I wonder--her name isn't
Davenant, is it?"

The boy shook his head.

"No, she's my mother's cousin really--only I call her Aunty, we
always got on so. She isn't really much older than me, her name is
Wendermott--Ernestine Wendermott. Ernestine's a pretty name, don't you
think?"

Trent rose to his feet, muttering something about a sound in the forest.
He stood with his back to the boy looking steadily at the dark line of
outlying scrub, seeing in reality nothing, yet keenly anxious that the
red light of the dancing flames should not fall upon his face. The boy
leaned on his elbow and looked in the same direction. He was puzzled by
a fugitive something which he had seen in Trent's face.

Afterwards Trent liked sometimes to think that it was the sound of her
name which had saved them all. For, whereas his gaze had been idle at
first, it became suddenly fixed and keen. He stooped down and whispered
something to the boy. The word was passed along the line of sleeping men
and one by one they dropped back into the deep-cut trench. The red fire
danced and crackled--only a few yards outside the flame-lit space came
the dark forms of men creeping through the rough grass like snakes.

CHAPTER XXIX

The attack was a fiasco, the fighting was all over in ten minutes. A
hundred years ago the men of Bekwando, who went naked and kn