For the light now revealed something which the darkness had hitherto hidden from their notice. Another sack had been ripped up, apparently with a sharp knife, from top nearly to bottom. Another was in the same condition, and a little further investigation showed that every one had been cut, so that, on the farther side where all had been dark, there was a slope of the yellow grain which had flowed out, leaving the sacks one-third empty. "Well, this is a rum go, sir," said the sergeant, scratching his head with his unoccupied hand. "They must have got a couple of sackfuls away." "But why slit them up, when they could have shouldered a couple and carried them off?" "Can't say, sir," said the sergeant. Lennox turned back to the doorway, and his companion followed with the light. "Hold it lower," said Lennox, and the man obeyed, showing the grain they had first noticed lying scattered about, while a little examination further showed the direction in which those who had carried it off had gone, leaving sign, as a tracker would call it, in the shape of a few grains which had fallen from the loads they carried. "Follow 'em up, sir?" said the sergeant. "It would be easy enough if it keeps like this." "Yes," said Lennox. "We should know then if it was the Boers." The man stepped forward with the door of the lantern opened and the light held close to the ground, making the bright yellow grains stand out clearly enough as he went on, though at the end of a minute instead of being in little clusters they diminished to one here and another there, all, however, running in one direction for some fifty yards; and then the sergeant stopped. "Seems rum, sir," he said. "You mean that the Boers would not have been going in this direction?" "That's so, sir. I'm beginning to think that it couldn't have been them." "I'm glad of it," said Lennox, "for I want to feel that we can trust them. Who could it have been, then?" "Some of the friendly natives, sir, I hope," replied the sergeant. "But they wouldn't have come this way, sergeant. It looks more as if some of our own people had been at the corn." "That's just what I was thinking, sir," replied the sergeant, "only I didn't want to say it." "But that's impossible, sergeant. A man might have slit up the sacks out of spite, or from sheer mischief, but he wouldn't have carried off any." "No, sir. He wouldn't, would he? Well, all I can say is that it's rather queer." "Well, go on," said Lennox; and the sergeant went on, tracing the grain right out to the back of the corrugated iron huts that formed one side of the square, and then past the angle and along the next side, now losing the traces, but soon picking them up again, the hard, dry earth completely refusing to give any trace of the bearer's feet. Then the next angle of the square was reached, turned, and the sergeant still passed on with the light.