D. "Oh, thank you." She was gone, and the Intelligence officer was left to his own thoughts. It had slipped out unawares. He had been caught: he realised that much as soon as the word had left his lips. He had yet much to learn.
There was a noise in the verandah. The Tiger had arrived with Stephanus, four ponies, and three native boys.
"This will do for a start, sir; we will amplify on the march!"
But as the Intelligence officer handed over his department to the quarter-guard of the 20th Dragoon Guards for safe keeping until the morrow, Miss Pretorius was saddling a pony in the kraal. She had to find her father before daybreak. Her father with his two sons was at Nieuwjaarsfontein!
Richmond Road is not a township. It is only a railway-station, but it boasts of one winkel[11] adjoining the railway buildings. Here the O.C. of the New Cavalry Brigade had taken up his quarters for the night, and here the Jew proprietor had arranged food and lodging for the staff. Part barn, part shop, and part dwelling, this dilapidated hostelry is typical of its kind. You meet with them all over the South African veldt. You bless them when they shelter you from the wind and rain; curse them when, housed in a six-storeyed mansion, which boasts the same legend over the door—hotel—you remember to what you were at one time reduced by the chances of a soldier's life.
The brigadier was just sitting down to the only meal that the slatternly wife of the Jew could produce—a steaming mess of lean boiled mutton—when the Intelligence officer returned from his adventure.
"Come and sit down, Mr Intelligence; have you raised a band of robbers yet?"
"Yes, sir; I've collected a trooper of Rimington's Guides and some boys."
"You seem a brighter fellow than I took you for. Well, here you are; here is another telegram for you. We ought to come right on the top of the swine to-morrow."