“Your littleness is not original enough to attract notice,” he replied with kindly irony.  “There is almost an epidemic of it.  Let us hope we shall have an antidote soon.”

There was a sudden cry from inside the hospital.  Al’mah shut her eyes for a moment, clinched her fingers, and became very pale; then she recovered herself, and turned her face towards the door, as though waiting for some one to come out.

“What is the matter?” he asked.  “Some bad case?”

“Yes—­very bad,” she replied.

“One you’ve been attending?”

“Yes.”

“What arm—­the artillery?” he asked with sudden interest.

“Yes, the artillery.”

He turned towards the door of the hospital again.  “One of my men?  What battery?  Do you know?”

“Not yours—­Schiller’s.”

“Schiller’s!  A Boer?”

She nodded.  “A Boer spy, caught by Boer bullets as he was going back.”

“When was that?”

“This morning early.”

“The little business at Wortmann’s Drift?”

She nodded.  “Yes, there.”

“I don’t quite understand.  Was he in our lines—­a Boer spy?”

“Yes.  But he wore British uniform, he spoke English.  He was an Englishman once.”

Suddenly she came up close to him, and looked into his face steadily.  “I will tell you all,” she said scarce above a whisper.  “He came to spy, but he came also to see his wife.  She had written to ask him not to join the Boers, as he said he meant to do; or, if he had, to leave them and join his own people.  He came, but not to join his fellow-countrymen.  He came to get money from his wife; and he came to spy.”

An illuminating thought shot into Stafford’s mind.  He remembered something that Byng once told him.

“His wife is a nurse?” he asked in a low tone.

“She is a nurse.”

“She knew, then, that he was a spy?” he asked.

“Yes, she knew.  I suppose she ought to be tried by court-martial.  She did not expose him.  She gave him a chance to escape.  But he was shot as he tried to reach the Boer lines.”

“And was brought back here to his wife—­to you!  Did he let them”—­he nodded towards the hospital—­“know he was your husband?”

When she spoke again her voice showed strain, but it did not tremble.  “Of course.  He would not spare me.  He never did.  It was always like that.”

He caught her hand in his.  “You have courage enough for a hundred,” he said.

“I have suffered enough for a hundred,” she responded.

Again that sharp cry rang out, and again she turned anxiously towards the door.

“I came to South Africa on the chance of helping him in some way,” she replied.  “It came to me that he might need me.”

“You paid the price of his life once to Kruger—­after the Raid, I’ve heard,” he said.

“Yes, I owed him that, and as much more as was possible,” she responded with a dark, pained look.