I kept myself awake even then with difficulty.  Riding on through the lurid gloom, we reached Salisbury at last, and found the town already crowded with refugees from the plateau.  However, we succeeded in securing two rooms at a house in the long street, and were soon sitting down to a much-needed supper.

As we rested, an hour or two later, in the ill-furnished back room, discussing this sudden turn of affairs with our host and some neighbours—­for, of course, all Salisbury was eager for news from the scene of the massacres—­I happened to raise my head, and saw, to my great surprise . . . a haggard white face peering in at us through the window.

It peered round a corner, stealthily.  It was an ascetic face, very sharp and clear-cut.  It had a stately profile.  The long and wiry grizzled moustache, the deep-set, hawk-like eyes, the acute, intense, intellectual features, all were very familiar.  So was the outer setting of long, white hair, straight and silvery as it fell, and just curled in one wave-like inward sweep where it turned and rested on the stooping shoulders.  But the expression on the face was even stranger than the sudden apparition.  It was an expression of keen and poignant disappointment—­as of a man whom fate has baulked of some well-planned end, his due by right, which mere chance has evaded.

“They say there’s a white man at the bottom of all this trouble,” our host had been remarking, one second earlier.  “The niggers know too much; and where did they get their rifles?  People at Rozenboom’s believe some black-livered traitor has been stirring up the Matabele for weeks and weeks.  An enemy of Rhodes’s, of course, jealous of our advance; a French agent, perhaps; but more likely one of these confounded Transvaal Dutchmen.  Depend upon it, it’s Kruger’s doing.”

As the words fell from his lips, I saw the face.  I gave a quick little start, then recovered my composure.

But Hilda noted it.  She looked up at me hastily.  She was sitting with her back to the window, and therefore, of course, could not see the face itself, which indeed was withdrawn with a hurried movement, yet with a certain strange dignity, almost before I could feel sure of having seen it.  Still, she caught my startled expression, and the gleam of surprise and recognition in my eye.  She laid one hand upon my arm.  “You have seen him?” she asked quietly, almost below her breath.

“Seen whom?”

“Sebastian.”

It was useless denying it to her.  “Yes, I have seen him,” I answered, in a confidential aside.

“Just now—­this moment—­at the back of the house—­looking in at the window upon us?”

“You are right—­as always.”

She drew a deep breath.  “He has played his game,” she said low to me, in an awed undertone.  “I felt sure it was he.  I expected him to play; though what piece, I knew not; and when I saw those poor dead souls, I was certain he had done it—­indirectly done it.  The Matabele are his pawns.  He wanted to aim a blow at me; and this was the way he chose to aim it.”