"Please, sir, can I speak to you a moment?" The Tiger stood in the doorway of the hotel dining-room.

"Anything serious?" asked the Intelligence

officer.

“I have made a discovery."

"Can you spare me, sir?" (to the Brigadier.) "For half an hour. I am going down to the commandant's office to see the general. Meet me there in half an hour."

"What is it, Tiger?"

"I will now show you something which will open your eyes. Something which will show you how this game is worked. It is only about two minutes' walk from here."

As the Intelligence officer and the Tiger made their way down the main street, it would have required no great strain upon the imagination to have fancied that the town had recently been carried by assault, and the victorious troops allowed the licence consequent upon street fighting. Even in the few short hours of occupation debauchery had had its way. Drunkenness is the worst attribute of irregular soldiering upon five shillings a-day. If the Colonial has money he will drink.

Where the average white man greets a friend and acquaintance with a hand-shake, the South African Colonial calls him to the nearest bar, and they drink their salutation. When halfa-dozen Colonial Corps "off the trek" meet in a wayside township, they turn it into an Inferno. Here they were crowding in and out of the houses in drunken hilarity. The townsfolk, delighted at their opportune arrival when Brand was at their gates, ply them with the spurious spirit which passes for whisky in South Africa. If the spirit is there, no amount of military precaution will prevent the Colonial trooper from securing it. You cannot place whole regiments-officers and men alike-under arrest. And when a Colonial regiment is "going large," in the majority of cases it would baffle any but an expert to distinguish officer from man. And while young

men in smasher hats fall over each other in the streets, the sober British troops look solidly on and wonder. Some, it is true, fall away with the rioters.

But they are few.

Discipline and want of means least upon a surface of virtue.

buoy them at Yet, be it said

to the credit of these roysterers in town, the

man who drinks the hardest in the afternoon will follow you the straightest in the morning!

The Intelligence officer and the Tiger had arrived at a little cottage on the outskirts of the town. A primitive yet pretty dwellinga toy villa of tin.

"Go in," said the Tiger.

The Intelligence officer knocked and entered. He was met with a smile by the pretty Dutch girl with the great blue eyes, who had so played upon his feelings at Richmond Road.

"Miss Pretorius!"

103

V.

A NEW CAST.

FOR the moment the Intelligence officer could ill disguise his astonishment. Here, standing in front of him, was the girl who had taught him his first lesson in staff jurisprudence. The memory of the incidents at the farmhouse, her petulance with the Tiger, her tears for her lover, had been almost effaced by the vicissitudes of the last forty-eight hours. If he had ever thought of the girl at all, it had been in the same spirit as a mariner recalls a passing ship, whose shapely lines were barely distinguishable in the night. His surprise was such that he could only marvel that while, travel-stained and dishevelled, he had arrived at Britstown with an effort, she had already reached that goal, and, to judge from the studied neatness of her attire, had reached

it with consummate ease. Her smile and attitude as she held out her hand to her visitor expressed satisfaction at the meetinga satisfaction tempered with a determination to show a front which should declare a full measure of resistance. Taking advantage of his officer's surprise, the Tiger discreetly withdrew.

Intelligence Officer. "Miss Pretorius,-how did you get here?"

Miss Pretorius. "Quite simply. Partly on horseback, partly in a Cape cart."

But

I. O. (recovering somewhat) "Naturally; I did not anticipate that you had walked. with what object?"

Miss P. (the corners of her pretty mouth sinking in defiance) “I might easily have walked, and arrived before a British column. As to my object in coming here, surely your Africander spy has informed you?"

I. O. "If you mean the Tiger, he has told me nothing!”

Miss P. "And may I also ask something,What authority have you to put me such a question? At the institution which prided itself in teaching me-an Africander girl-the