en there'll be
no harm done. In either case, it is best to keep still. My own
notion is that I'll not get it. As a rule, one doesn't get the V. C.
for shinning up the side of a hill, no matter how steep it is."

Carew made no attempt to discuss the chances. Instead, he merely
asked,--

"Mayn't I tell Miss Mellen?"

Weldon shook his head. It was exactly to prevent the inevitable
consequences of Alice Mellen's knowing the story that he was seeking
to extort the promise from Carew. To protect his motive, however, he
took a sudden resolution.

"I shall not even tell my mother," he answered, with slow emphasis.

Carew raised his brows.

"Then I suppose that ties my tongue. I am sorry. What's the use of
being so confoundedly modest, Weldon?"

"Do you promise?"

"I suppose I must."

"On your honor?"

"On my honor."

Weldon stretched himself out at full length once more.

"So be it. Give me a light. You took my last match," he said as
unconcernedly as if they had merely been talking of the weather.

Indeed, the weather might well have been the subject of their talk.
The earth was baked until it cracked beneath the parching sun and
wind. There had been no rain for weeks; but, to-day, the raw wind
sent the lead-colored clouds flying over the sky, and the
lead-colored clouds were heavy with rain. All the morning and till
mid-afternoon, the column had been camping not far away, while their
weary, hungry mounts had been turned out on the veldt to graze. For
men and mounts, the halt was needed.

The fight about the laager had been no easy victory. Twelve hundred
half-starved Britons are no match for fifteen hundred Boers fat with
easy living. Weldon's hold on the crest had decided the game; but
the game had not played itself out without wounds for some and utter
weariness for all. War mad, yet half-dazed in all other respects,
Weldon had watched the reinforcements come swarming up the hill to
his relief, had heard their cheers mingling themselves with the
sound of his name. Then, listless, but with his arm still about
Paddy's shoulders, he had seen the fight move to its destined
finish. He came down from the hilltop, feeling that something had
taken yet one more turn in the evertightening coil of his brain. For
one instant, as they were laying Paddy into the narrow grave scooped
out of the veldt, the coil relaxed. Then, as the lumps of earth
closed over his plucky, loyal little comrade, it tightened again and
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