"Van Bleit's scored this time," he answered. "It's first game to him... But the rubber isn't won yet. I've merely got my deserts for being a gullible idiot." She worked at the knots with her teeth, and after a while unbound his raw and bleeding wrists and flung the rope to the floor. "My word! but they've used you ill," she said... "If I'd only guessed..." Lawless made no response. He was peering with half-blinded eyes at a huddled object on the ground that he had taken for a bundle of old rags, but now that his sight was growing used to the obscurity discovered to be the sleeping form of a native woman, who lay curled up against the mud wall, like an animal, with her superb arms flung high above her head. She was either fast asleep or feigning slumber, for she made neither sound nor movement, but lay like a dead woman, save for the gentle rise and fall of her bosom under the ochre blanket that formed its sole covering. "What is the meaning of that?" he said sternly, pointing to the recumbent figure, his burning gaze on Tottie's face. She laughed with a slight embarrassment. In the surprise of his entry she had forgotten that the woman was there. "Oh! that's all right," she answered jerkily. "Couldn't turn her out, you know... The hut belongs to her--in a way. She happened along the first evening, and was for running like a scared rabbit at sight of me, but,"--Tottie laughed again. "Even a nigger is companionable," she said. Lawless looked hard at her. "She's raw," Tottie explained... "Zulu... only speaks her own tongue. I know a few words, and so we rub along." "And her belongings?" Lawless asked. "Has it occurred to you that there's a nigger husband somewhere? If she makes this place her home she doesn't live alone here." "He hasn't shown up so far," Tottie answered comfortably. She touched significantly a holster at her waist. "I'm not scared of niggers, Grit." "Well, it doesn't matter," he said. "You've done with this. Van Bleit's gone--Denzil too... And they've taken the horses. It's twenty miles to the town, but we've got to do it." Tottie looked thoughtful. "There's a nearer way than that, baas," she said. She jerked her head in the direction of the sleeping native. "There's some sort of a farm within reasonable walking distance... _She_ makes the journey for sour milk. They'd let us have a conveyance if we paid enough, I expect... It's better than tramping, anyhow. We'll rouse her, and make her show us the way." She stood up, shook out the folds of her skirt, and surveyed herself in the glass she had brought from the house and hung by a nail on the wall. One cheek was hectic with artificial colour, the other, on which she had been lying, was white and red in streaks. "What a guy!" she murmured. "I'll need to repair the ravages before we start, old man... You wouldn't look any the worse for a wash yourself." She laid a hand affectionately on his arm.