He continued to run at a good steady double, saving his wind as he did so, and his courage and confidence rose when he found that he was distancing his pursuers so much that he could neither see nor hear anything of them. As he ran on he thought for a moment or two of the fierce gleaming eyes and glistening teeth of Jarrett--of the blood he had shed, and the life he had perhaps taken for the first time, remorsefully; but had he not acted thus, what would he have been? A gashed corpse! 'Bah!' he said aloud, 'I am a soldier--why such thoughts at all? Why should I have mercy when these wretches would have had none?' and he began to regret that he had not fired a random shot or two through the room-door and knocked over some of them on the staircase. A sound now struck his ear; it was the thud of galloping hoofs upon the veldt, and his heart sank as he remembered the two horses in the stable, where his dead nag was lying. He looked back, and there, sure enough, in the grey dawn were two mounted men riding in scouting fashion, far apart, and he could not for a moment doubt they were two of Jarrett's companions in pursuit, thirsting with avarice and for revenge. He made his way, stumbling wildly and breathlessly down a wooded ravine to elude their sight; on and on he strove till a vine root caught his foot: his hands outstretched beat the air for a moment, and then he fell headlong forward and downward into a donga full of brushwood. For a moment he had a sense of strange palms, and giant cacti, and of great plants with long spiky leaves being about him, and then he became unconscious as he lay there stunned and bleeding profusely from a wound in his forehead, which had come in contact with a stone. END OF VOL. I. BILLING & SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.