The same belief was in the mind of Van Bleit. He looked into the hard cold face of the man on horseback, and recalled with very real regret how he had slashed that same thin, scarred face with his whip when he had the man at his mercy. With still greater regret he remembered how he had refrained from shooting him on that occasion. If he had only killed him then he would not be in this mess. He blinked stupidly, and dropped his eyes, and fell to thinking. There was no way out. He was fairly trapped, and that by two men who owed him each a very considerable grudge. He thought of Tom Hayhurst's broken head. It was easily seen where the blow had fallen by the deeper shade of the new hair that had grown over the place. Then later thoughts of Tom Hayhurst in connection with his disguise obtruded themselves, and again the angry purple showed in his greying face. "Did you bring a length of rope, Grit?" he heard a voice inquire, and started involuntarily at the unfamiliar sound. It was the voice of Hayhurst, no longer high-pitched in the affected drawl that was assumed and discarded with the wonderful golden wig, but the sharp clear tones of the young engineer as he had heard them in Cape Town. There was no verbal answer, but the man addressed took a short coil of rope from his coat pocket and threw it to the speaker. Hayhurst caught it and approached Van Bleit. "Now, darling," he said, in the accents that were Tottie's, "put your hands behind you." Van Bleit complied because he dared not refuse. "I'd like," he said, and his hands wavered till the click of Lawless' revolver set at half-cock reluctantly compelled him to bring them into the required position, "to throttle you." Hayhurst laughed. "I don't doubt it," he answered. Not being particularly soft-hearted, and having in mind, besides his own injuries, those raw wrists of Lawless' which he had unbound in the early morning by the obscure light in the Kaffir hut, he drew the rope tightly about Van Bleit's thick wrists and fastened it securely with a vindictive satisfaction in the knowledge of the discomfort he caused. "You ought to feel flattered," he said, "that we admired your methods sufficiently to copy them." He stepped from behind and stood in front of him, jeering. "Wouldn't you like to kiss me? ... It may be your last opportunity." Van Bleit's ashen face turned brick red, and from red changed again slowly to the dirty grey colour that told of the terror that possessed him. He did not answer, but he spat at his tormentor in his rage. Lawless dismounted and hitched the rein of his horse to a limb of a tree. He pocketed his weapon, and approached Van Bleit, who, expecting a personal attack, fell back hurriedly before his advance. "Stand still," he commanded. And Van Bleit obeyed.