“Seems rum, sir,” he said.
“You mean that the Boers would not have been going in this direction?”
“That’s so, sir. I’m beginning to think that it couldn’t have been them.”
“I’m glad of it,” said Lennox, “for I want to feel that we can trust them. Who could it have been, then?”
“Some of the friendly natives, sir, I hope,” replied the sergeant.
“But they wouldn’t have come this way, sergeant. It looks more as if some of our own people had been at the corn.”
“That’s just what I was thinking, sir,” replied the sergeant, “only I didn’t want to say it.”
“But that’s impossible, sergeant. A man might have slit up the sacks out of spite, or from sheer mischief, but he wouldn’t have carried off any.”
“No, sir. He wouldn’t, would he? Well, all I can say is that it’s rather queer.”
“Well, go on,” said Lennox; and the sergeant went on, tracing the grain right out to the back of the corrugated iron huts that formed one side of the square, and then past the angle and along the next side, now losing the traces, but soon picking them up again, the hard, dry earth completely refusing to give any trace of the bearer’s feet.