he open country in long,
waving lines that ended in the deep yellow band of the afterglow.
Above them, the sky was blue; but it dropped from the blue zenith to
the yellow horizon through every imaginable shade of emerald and
topaz until all other shades lost themselves in one vivid blaze of
burnt orange. It had been a day of intense heat. Already, however,
the falling twilight and the inevitable eastward shift of the wind
had brought the first hint of the evening chill.

Weldon shrugged his shoulders.

"Hurry up, Carew," he adjured his companion. "I am for leaving our
feast and hieing us back to the sanctuary."

"Right, oh!" Carew raised his jam tin and took careful aim at a rock
in mid stream.

Instantly the Kaffir hitched forward.

"Mine?" he demanded.

Carew stayed his arm.

"What for?"

"Eat. Um good."

"Nothing in there but atmosphere, sonny. You can get that out of any
box. Suppose I can hit that little black point, Weldon?"

"Not if I know it," Weldon said coolly, as he tossed his own tin to
the boy and, seizing that of Carew, threw it after its mate. "Let
the little coon have his lick, Carew. It's not pretty to watch him
go at it, tongue first; but we can't all be Chesterfields. What is
your name, sonny?"

The boy paused with suspended tongue, while he rolled the great
whites of his eyes up at the questioner. Then, the whites still
turned upon Weldon, he took one more hasty lick.

"Kruger Roberts," he said then, detaching himself for an instant
from his treasure. "Oh, I infer you like to sit on fences?" Weldon
said interrogatively.

"Ya, Boss."

"Which side do you intend to come down?"

"Me no come down," the boy answered nonchalantly, more from inherent
indifference than from any comprehension of Weldon's allegory.

"All right. Stop where you are. Meanwhile, I think I should call you
Jamboree."

"Ya, Boss." The face vanished from sight behind the tilted tin. Then
it reappeared, and a huge finger pointed to the remaining tins.
"Mine, too?"

But already the boy was forgotten. Weldon was following hard on the
heels of the sentry who had dashed through the gate in the
churchyard wall.

Four o'clock the next morning, that darkest hour which, by its very
darkness, heralds the coming dawn, found C. Squadron moving out from
the gray-walled churchyard, their faces set towards the eastern
mountains. All night long they had stood under arms, ready for the
attack which might be at hand. By dawn