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The English voices of the chatting men crouched upon their beasts' withers or sprawling on the limbers, the trampling and snorting of the horses, the sharp signal-whistles of the leaders, the curt utterances of command, mingled with the stream of thought that raced through the busy brain of Bough Van Busch.
This pretended Secret Agent of the War-Intelligence-Bureau that never existed, and who called himself Van Busch a name that's as common among Boers as Murphy is among Irishmen arranged to pass off my wife as his sister, a refugee from Gueldersdorp, who'd married a German drummer, and buried him not long before.
Every knavish venture brought in money or money's worth, every base plot was carried through triumphantly. Bough, alias Van Busch, was not ordinarily a superstitious man, but his run of luck made him almost afraid at times.
And suppose I have spent it, how shall I replace it? Do you wish to ruin an honest man?" Van Busch grinned, and P. Blinders gave up hopelessly. At least, it seemed so, for he turned sharp round, and trotted off with sorrowfully-drooping black coat-tails, in search of the meek grey pony and the terrible old man.
You had also a bird's-eye view of the lower end of the farm kitchen, where the wall had cracked, and bulged, and spit out some of its stones. To this eyrie Bough Van Busch retreated when the wall of dust to the south-west gave up the dim shapes of the Advance, and the beat of many iron-shod hoofs, and the roll of many iron-shod wheels made distant thunder, coming nearer, always nearer.... Maar!
Van Busch twisted the ring about his little finger, and spoke with a more sluggish lisp and slurring of the consonants than even was usual with him. "Is she short and square, with black hair and round blue eyes, and red cheeks and thick ankles?" Lady Hannah, despite all her recently-gained experience of Van Busch, had not yet mastered his method of eliciting information.
Then he said, with his most candid look and simplest lisp: "No tricks, brother; all fair and above-board. Ask the Commandant whether Van Busch is square or not? He knows that the hundred and fifty was paid you honestly on his account, and that I kept but fifty for myself. And you're not the chap to bilk him of his due. Sure no, you'll never do that, never! Go and see him now, and settle up.
His whole appearance, says the irreverent Busch, 'was a little unsoldierlike. The man looked too soft, I might say too shabby, for the uniform he wore. While one scene in the stupendous drama was performed at the weaver's cottage, another was acted or endured in Sedan, where De Wimpffen had summoned the generals to consider the terms of capitulation.
But his valuable services had been rendered for so much more than nothing that Lady Hannah found herself in the condition her Bingo was wont to describe as "stony." She had sent for Van Busch to tell him that the position was untenable.
The jackal had had to yield his bone to the hungry lion. Still, it was wise to be in good odour with the Republics; that was why Van Busch had taken on the job. He had not been impelled to risk his skin, and get shut up in this stinking, starving hole by anything the sharp-eyed little Englishwoman, so unpleasantly awake at last regarding the genuine aims and real character of the chivalrous Mr.
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