cure, watching and praying for their
safety.

At last Hansie fell into a heavy, unrefreshing sleep, from which she
was roused in the early dawn by her mother's voice, hurried and
extremely agitated.

"Hansie, Hansie, come here quick!"

"Where, mother? Where are you?"

"In the dining-room! Come at once, come and look!"

Hansie sprang out of bed, alarmed and now thoroughly roused, and ran
into the dining-room, where she found her mother concealing herself
behind the lace curtains and cautiously looking out of the window to
the Military Camp.

She half turned as her daughter approached and said in a whisper:
"Don't show yourself. Look, Hansie, we have been betrayed. Our house
is suspected. See how it is being watched."

Hansie looked and looked again. There was no doubt of it.

The sergeant was in excited conversation with a man on horseback, well
known to Hansie by sight as a detective in plain clothes. Here and
there the soldiers were grouped around other private detectives, on
horseback and on foot, talking and gesticulating and pointing to the
house in wild excitement. What struck Hansie as almost ludicrous, even
at that moment, was the _unbounded astonishment_ betrayed by them.

Their looks and gestures spoke as plainly as the plainest words: "Can
it be possible? Has that been going on under our noses? And pray, how
long?"

"There is no doubt about it. We and our house have been betrayed. But
cheer up, mother; forewarned is forearmed. Oh, silly fools, to give
away their game like that!"

"They have not seen us yet, Hansie. They think we are asleep."

"Even so, the servants are about. Oh, mother!"

"Go and get dressed, Hansie, and let us behave exactly the same as
usual. All we can do now is to see that we do not betray that we
_know_ we have been betrayed. How do you think this has come about?"

"The crowd under the willows last night?"

"Gentleman Jim?"

"Flippie?"

They looked at one another inquiringly and slowly shook their heads.

Good reader, after more than ten years, when they talk about this
period of their lives, they still look inquiringly at one another and
slowly shake their heads.

_Who could it have been? How did it come about?_

* * * * *

When Hansie went out into the garden an hour or so later to gather
roses for the table, Harmony was flooded with the exquisite morning
sun, the birds were twittering and bickering among themselves, and
Carlo