Lyle laughed scornfully, raising his voice, and thus gathering a crowd round him, while Madame Vander Roey, undaunted, but anxious, watched her husband's countenance by the light of the wagon lantern. "It is well for you to talk thus," said Hermanus the stutterer, who, once set going, could talk glibly; "you may run away in the scuffle, and you know you cannot escape justice if we yield--you are speaking in favour of your own interests. I say it is folly to fight now,--make a truce." "Never," shouted Vander Roey, suddenly kindling with anger, as he remembered his contemptuous, dismissal from Sir John Manvers's residence. "Fight or fly,--which shall it be, my friends? Speak, for before daylight we must be up and doing." He raised his lofty figure to its utmost height and looked round, his wife leaned anxiously over his shoulder; the lantern, swinging to and fro, showed the expression on the face of each; hers was anxious, yet fearless; his brows were knit, his eyes flashed, and he added, "Let the majority decide; remember my watchword is still `War--war to the knife!'" The English traitors sent up their hats in the air, and cheered the leader, and all the young Boers did the same. Our convict had taken care that not a youth should leave the force; within a circle of two miles behind the strong ridge there were four hundred good men and true, between the ages of twenty-five and thirty; the whole force amounted to eight hundred, and few of the oldest had reached the age of fifty. Lyle turned to congratulate Madame Vander Roey on her husband's decision; the curtains of her wagon were closed--he lifted a corner, her head, covered with her scarlet handkerchief, was almost buried in the cushions of her bed; by the light of the lantern he could see her whole frame was shaking with emotion, and stifled groans issued from her lips. He dropped the screen with a sneer; "She will come to her senses by-and-by," muttered he; and he was right. At dawn, in spite of a wind which cut like razors, she was busied with Hermanus and others at the stores hidden in the rocks. Lyle and Brennard took charge of the "Cape Smoke," and served out to every man his _sopie_. The _spirits_ of the bivouac were never suffered to flag. The horsemen had been sent on with all speed to the larger encampment of Boers, Vander Roey's party being in front, to defend and keep possession of the strong ridge, along which, at intervals, the few guns the rebels possessed had been ranged. To the guns were attached the number of men necessary to work them. Gray had yielded passively enough to Lyle's orders on the subject, but that very apathy made the latter more suspicious of his victim. Unnoticed by the deserter, he watched him narrowly, and, all-daring and subtle as he was, felt baffled in his conjectures as to the probable issue of Gray's forced enlistment in the rebels' cause.