by a frilled cap, white as a woman's, with a little
mouth, a very short upper lip, and a receding chin.

Presently a rather tall woman's figure was making its way across the
veld. As it passed a hollowed-out antheap it knelt down, and stuffed in
the saddlebags with the man's clothing, closing up the anthill with bits
of ground to look as natural as possible. Like a sinner hiding his deed
of sin, the hider started once and looked round, but yet there was no
one near save a meerkat, who had lifted herself out of her hole and sat
on her hind legs watching. He did not like that even she should see, and
when he rose she dived away into her hole. Then he walked on leisurely,
that the dusk might have reached the village streets before he walked
there. The first house was the smith's, and before the open door two
idle urchins lolled. As he hurried up the street in the gathering
gloom he heard them laugh long and loudly behind him. He glanced round
fearingly, and would almost have fled, but that the strange skirts clung
about his legs. And after all it was only a spark that had alighted on
the head of one, and not the strange figure they laughed at.

The door of the hotel stood wide open, and the light fell out into the
street. He knocked, and the landlady came. She peered out to look for
the cart that had brought the traveller; but Gregory's heart was brave
now he was so near the quiet room. He told her he had come with the
transport wagons that stood outside the town.

He had walked in, and wanted lodgings for the night.

It was a deliberate lie, glibly told; he would have told fifty, though
the recording angel had stood in the next room with his pen dipped in
the ink. What was it to him? He remembered that she lay there saying
always: "I am better."

The landlady put his supper in the little parlour where he had sat in
the morning. When it was on the table she sat down in the rocking-chair,
as her fashion was to knit and talk, that she might gather news for
her customers in the taproom. In the white face under the queer,
deep-fringed cap she saw nothing of the morning's traveller. The
newcomer was communicative. She was a nurse by profession, she said; had
come to the Transvaal, hearing that good nurses were needed there. She
had not yet found work. The landlady did not perhaps know whether there
would be any for her in that town?

The landlady put down her knitting and smote her fat hands together.

If it wasn't the v