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"I I have been the victim of an outrage, sir!" "Sorry to hear it; what's your name?" "Brooker, sir," volunteered W. Keyse's Corporal. "The other sentry we put on with Keyse here." "Mr. Brooker, sir, General Stores, Market Square," babbled the citizen. "Well, Private Brooker, what have you to say?"
"Well, you'll know her again when you meet her or she will you," said the patrol-officer, about to move on, when a deplorable figure came staggering into the circle, and the rider reined up his horse. "What's this? Hey, Johnny, where's your gun?" It was W. Keyse's fellow-sentry from the opposite flank of the Convent. "And time you turned up, I don't think," commented W. Keyse.
Midnight before you gits in if you catch this next up-Express.... Watto! Give us 'old o' this 'ere, Missus! You can 'ave mine instead." "Please, no! I need nothing ... nothing!" She stayed his savage attack on the buttons of Mrs. Keyse's green-and-yellow ulster by holding out her watch. "How much time have I left to catch the up-Express?" "Eight minutes. By Cripps! you'll 'ave to run for it."
Then: "Hold on, man, you're bleeding," said W. Keyse's Sergeant, an old Naval Brigade man. "How did ye get that 'ere nasty prod under the eye?" W. Keyse put up his hand, and gingerly felt the place that hurt. His fingers were red when they came away. "The young woman wot was with the Dutchman, she jabbed me with a 'at-pin, to git me to let 'im go."
But the soles of W. Keyse's boots were worn to their last thickness of brown paper, and all his clothes and Emigration Jane's, with the exception of the things him and her had on, had been pawned before it occurred to the man that that kind of walking ended in the Workhouse. The woman had known it from the very beginning. The valorous deeds of W. Keyse stood him in no good stead.
Suppose only suppose the silent threatening Thing across the border, jewelled with the glowing Argus-eyes of many camp-fires, conjecturable in dark masses flecked with the white of waggon-tilts, and sometimes giving out the dull gleam of iron or the sparkle of steel, were to choose this, W. Keyse's first night on guard, for an attack!
Yet a fringe that had associations for Lynette, reaching a long way from Harley Street, and back to the old days at Gueldersdorp before the Siege. "Surely I know you? I must have known you at Gueldersdorp." She added as Mrs. Keyse's eyes said "Yes": "You used to be a housemaid at the Convent. How strange that I should not have remembered it until now!
W. Keyse's beheld, at the moment when his weapon was wrenched from him, two long grey arms come out of the darkness and coil about the largely-looming form of Slabberts.
I'd perish you, I would, if I was 'im! Off the fyce o' the earth, an' charnce bein' 'ung for it! Take away that gun, you silly little imitation sojer d' you 'eer?" The weapon was extremely weighty. W. Keyse's arms ached frightfully. Perspiration trickled into his eyes from under the tilted smasher. He felt damp and small, and desperately at a loss.
And Slabberts, with a stalwart escort of B.S.A. troopers, reluctantly moved off in the direction of the guard-house. "Who was the fellow who helped you, do you know?" asked the officer who had ridden up with the patrol. "Threw him and sat on him until the picket came up, you say," he commented, on hearing W. Keyse's version of the story.
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