as a guard to the house should father wish it. We have had some exciting work, let me tell you. It was wonderful the way our black police hunted down their countrymen; but I must not stop, as they will be wanting to know at home what has happened.”
Dismounting, Harry hurried into the house, while his younger brother led his tired steed to the paddock.
Harry had just made his report, and Mrs Hugh was busy in preparing some food for their expected visitors, when Mr Hayward, accompanied by a young officer, rode up to the door, closely followed by a dozen black troopers, in dark blue and red uniforms. Mr Hayward introduced Lieutenant Bertram, who explained his reasons for coming.
Mrs Berrington was profuse in her thanks. “We have
had a dreadful fright, Mr Bertram, and I hope that you and your men will remain here until the blacks are driven out of the country. I shall get no rest, night or day.”
“I am afraid, madam, that will not be so easy an operation as you suppose,” answered the lieutenant. “The blacks have an idea that they are the owners of the soil, and that we are intruders, and they are not very willing to decamp. Our business is rather to keep them in order, and prevent them from attacking the whites.”
As Harry explained that they had been a good many hours without eating, supper was immediately placed on the table, while provisions were carried out to the troopers, who sat down in a circle on the grass-plot—it could not be dignified as a lawn—with their horses picketed near them. The ladies went out to see them as they sat in the sunlight, not at all inconvenienced by its glare. They seemed merry, careless fellows, laughing and chattering away in their own curious lingo—a mixture of English and native words.
Mr Bertram said they were all blacks from a distance, composed of two or three different tribes who could not understand each other’s original language. The captain was grieved to find that there was little doubt that his shepherd had been murdered, although his body had not been discovered. The flock had been driven to a station nearer home, where two of the police had been left to watch the hostile natives, although it was not at all likely that they would for the present make another attack.