owards the peak which he was in honor bound to
hold. And their course was the chord of the arc of his own circle.
He dropped back to the saddle where he bent low, yielding his whole
body to the flying body of his horse.

The crest was sharp. To the east, its approach was more easy; but on
the west it offered a wall of blank, black rock. The fat Boer ponies
were still at some distance from the eastern slope, when Weldon
flung himself from his panting broncho. Carew protested, as they
told off by fours and he was left, the third man, with Paddy's
mount, the gray broncho and a huge brown Argentine horse on his
hands.

"Sorry, old man!" Weldon said briefly. "It's luck, and dead against
you. Still, it may save Miss Mellen a bad half-hour. Look out for
Piggie. She deserves it." And, turning, he led the way up the wall
of rock, with thirteen men, breathless, grim and eager, scrambling
at his heels.

For moments, it seemed to him that Fate was idly tossing the dice to
and fro, before allowing herself to make the final, decisive cast.
From the farther side of the hill, he heard a sudden terrified snort
from one of the Boer ponies, then the thud of feet, as they charged
up the approaches of the long slope. From behind him, there arose a
groan, as one of the men, missing his foothold in the deepening
dusk, crashed back against the loose rocks at the bottom of the
hill. Then a shot and a whinnying moan told him that Carew and his
three comrades had edged around the base of the hill into range of
the enemy above them. The man might be wounded, too, as well as the
mount. Seven Boers, and they were thirteen in all. The cast was all
for--

A dash of light! A rattle of firing! Three of his men dropped
backwards. The other ten looked up to face a second flash from the
summit. Only eight heard the answering echoes which came rolling
back to them from the encircling hills. Then Paddy's voice came in
his ears, low, but as unconcerned as ever.

"Remember the fellow who was rejected on account of his teeth,
little Canuck? 'Faith,' he said; 'it's shooting the damned Boers I
want to be, not eating them.' But, by the holy Virgin Mary, in
another ten minutes we'll be shaking 'em between our teeth."

The next flash but one showed only five men on the steep rocky wall;
but those five men were close to the summit. Once on the top, their
rifles could come into play. It was maddening to be picked off, like
stuffed crows resting on a tree bran