to kiss her. Her answer came in a way that surprised him. She dodged away from his grasp, and as he came forward again she slashed him twice across his face with her whip, and then ran away into the house, leaving him standing in the yard listening to the laugh of a Kaffir servant who had witnessed the scene.

“All the worse for you, missy,” he cried, almost blubbering from the pain and from his anger. “You shall suffer for this, and for stealing my horse.” Then catching sight of the Kaffir’s grinning face he relieved his feelings by cutting that unfortunate son of Ham across the back with his ox-hide whip till he yelled with pain. Somewhat calmed by this he walked down to the boat and went over to Gordon, determined to let the law of the land revenge his wrongs.

It turned out that his threat was not an idle one. Already the inhabitants of Gordon were discussing the part she had taken in the escape of the convict. One of the guards noticed her give the signal, and his evidence was confirmed by Jappie.

Johnstone, who had been acting as magistrate, cursed his fate which obliged him to commit Kate to take her trial at Kimberley. But the affair was a serious one, and became more serious when the next day the border police came back without having found their man.

“It’s a beastly duty to have to discharge, particularly for such a pitiful screw as one gets from this cursed Colonial Government. But I had to do it on the evidence,” he said to her when the inquiry was ended, and she was duly committed to take her trial, and circumstances allowed him to resume his non-official way of looking at things. “You need not be nervous, however; jury won’t bring themselves to convict you,” he added, to reassure her.

The case created immense excitement at Kimberley. From the first public feeling was with the prisoner. Jappie was considered to show great vindictiveness, and the story of his having been an unsuccessful suitor to the prisoner somehow got abroad. He had got his horse back too, it having been sent to him from Stellaland, and this, in the opinion of the public, made the animus he showed all the more vindictive. When the day of the trial came on, and the prisoner was seen in the dock, public opinion expressed itself most unanimously in her favour.

The Crown prosecutor’s arguments were very cogent, and the judge’s summing up dead against the prisoner; but the jury gave their verdict without ever turning round in the box. It was not guilty.

“There ain’t such a crowd of pretty girls in this camp that we can afford to shut ’em up in prison,” was the opinion expressed by the foreman as he partook of champagne at the expense of a sympathiser with beauty in distress.

In the mean time George Darrell found himself secure in Stellaland. After riding all day he had pulled up with his horse dead beat, at a house which had once been used as a store some miles on the other side of the river which marked the border of Griqualand West. The house was inhabited by some white men, who constituted themselves into a body which somewhat resembled the free companies some centuries back—nominally fighting for the Kaffir chief, but really pretty much for their own hand.

“Hullo, who the devil is this?” exclaimed one of these warriors, who was sitting on the bench outside the house as Darrell came up.

“Hullo, he has got ’em on—he has got ’em all on,” said another of the company—a gentleman who in the course of his varied career had been a singer in a London East End music-hall, and now sang the songs of Houndsditch in a strange land—as he saw the fashion of Darrell’s garb.

“Look here, it won’t do; it will bring the peelers on us.”

“He’s a good fellow; I know him—worth a dozen of you,” said a black-haired, handsome, devil-may-care-looking young fellow, known as Black Jamie, who acted as the leader of the company. “It’s Darrell, who used to be working down the river. I heard he was ‘run in’ some time ago,”—and getting up, he came forward and shook the new arrival heartily by the hand.

It was lucky for Jappie that Black Jamie had a high opinion of Darrell; for it was on that account he was induced to give in to the other’s wish that the horse should be sent back by a Kaffir to his owner—a proceeding which was thoroughly repugnant to the feelings of himself and the honourable company he commanded. He let Darrell have his way, however, and then sent him on with some Kaffirs to their huts, where the police, even if they crossed the border, would not care to follow him. A day or two afterwards, when danger of pursuit was over, Darrell was enlisted as one of Black Jamie’s troop in the service of Mankoran, the chief of the Bechuanas.

Chapter Three.

“So it seems that the Cape Colony was very nearly saving us the trouble of looking after poor Tom Gray’s girl,” said the Rector of Morden, Warwickshire, to his wife, who sat opposite to him at the breakfast-table, as he put down the newspaper he had in his hand. The Warners of Morden Rectory were distant cousins of Kate, and the Rector had been her father’s greatest friend at college. When they had heard of his death they had written out offering Kate a home, for they were kindly people, and as they only had two boys of their own, they thought she would not be in the way.

“Poor girl, it was very foolish of her to make herself so notorious; however, I like the way she writes. I should not say there was anything sly about her,” answered Mrs Warner.

Kate Gray had, in answer to their invitation, written to them, telling of the trouble she had got into, and confessing that though the jury had acquitted her, she really had helped the convict, whom she believed to be innocent, to escape.

“It is sensible of her to send the newspaper report of the trial. After all it’s just the sort of thing her father would have done at her age,” answered the Rector; and his thoughts went back to his old friend, with whom he had got into many scrapes in their old Christ-Church days.

Mrs Warner was inclined to take rather a more serious view of the affair, but for all that she agreed with her husband that it would be best to have their cousin home to stay with them; and so she was advised to come home as soon as she could, and forget all about her adventure at the Cape, in the pretty Warwickshire village. She was glad enough to accept their offer, for though she had become a heroine at the Cape, she found that heroines were rather at a discount as governesses, and that it was difficult to see what she could do with herself there. So two years from the day of her trial found Kate quite at home at the Rectory, and happy enough in her new life.

“The Watsons are going to bring a friend with them to tennis, I forget his name,” said Mr Warner to his wife one day at luncheon. “He seems rather a pleasant sort of man. I met him at Coventry the other day; he comes from the Diamond Fields, where he made some money. I wonder whether you ever met him out there, Kate?”

Kate looked troubled. It occurred to her that more people were likely to know a young lady who had stood in the dock in a criminal court than she knew; and in consequence she did not feel over comfortable at the idea of meeting any one who came from the Diamond Fields.

The others understood her embarrassment, though they tried to persuade her that there was no reason for her fears. “People who have known one another at the ends of the earth would never tell tales. I should say that rule would be kept for mutual convenience,” said Mr Warner, who, like many an