“But how can you expect Sebastian, of all men, to clear it, Hilda?” I cried.  “He is ready to kill us both, merely to prevent your attempting a revision; is it likely you can force him to confess his crime, still less induce him to admit it voluntarily?”

She placed her hands over her eyes and pressed them hard with a strange, prophetic air she often had about her when she gazed into the future.  “I know my man,” she answered, slowly, without uncovering her eyes.  “I know how I can do it—­if the chance ever comes to me.  But the chance must come first.  It is hard to find.  I lost it once at Nathaniel’s.  I must not lose it again.  If Sebastian is killed skulking here in Rhodesia, my life’s purpose will have failed; I shall not have vindicated my father’s good name; and then, we can never marry.”

“So I understand, Hilda, my orders are these:  I am to go out and fight for the women and children, if possible; that Sebastian shall be made prisoner alive, and on no account to let him be killed in the open!”

“I give you no orders, Hubert.  I tell you how it seems best to me.  But if Sebastian is shot dead—­then you understand it must be all over between us.  I never can marry you until, or unless, I have cleared my father.”

“Sebastian shall not be shot dead,” I cried, with my youthful impetuosity.  “He shall be brought in alive, though all Salisbury as one man try its best to lynch him.”

I went out to report myself as a volunteer for service.  Within the next few hours the whole town had been put in a state of siege, and all available men armed to oppose the insurgent Matabele.  Hasty preparations were made for defence.  The ox-waggons of settlers were drawn up outside in little circles here and there, so as to form laagers, which acted practically as temporary forts for the protection of the outskirts.  In one of these I was posted.  With our company were two American scouts, named Colebrook and Doolittle, irregular fighters whose value in South African campaigns had already been tested in the old Matabele war against Lo-Bengula.  Colebrook, in particular, was an odd-looking creature—­a tall, spare man, bodied like a weasel.  He was red-haired, ferret-eyed, and an excellent scout, but scrappier and more inarticulate in his manner of speech than any human being I had ever encountered.  His conversation was a series of rapid interjections, jerked out at intervals, and made comprehensible by a running play of gesture and attitude.

“Well, yes,” he said, when I tried to draw him out on the Matabele mode of fighting.  “Not on the open.  Never!  Grass, if you like.  Or bushes.  The eyes of them!  The eyes! . . .”  He leaned eagerly forward, as if looking for something.  “See here, Doctor; I’m telling you.  Spots.  Gleaming.  Among the grass.  Long grass.  And armed, too.  A pair of ’em each.  One to throw”—­he raised his hand as if lancing something—­“the other