"What's he doing out there in this blazing sun?"

"He's on guard," said the Colonial. "I thought you were here when it
happened. It's the best thing I ever saw or heard of in my whole life!"
He rolled half over on his side and laughed at the remembrance. "You see,
some of the men went down into the river, to look for fresh pools of water,
and they found a nigger, hidden away in a hole in the bank, not five
hundred yards from here! They found the bloody rascal by a little path he
tramped down to the water, trodden hard, just like a porcupine's walk.
They got him in the hole like an aardvark, with a bush over the mouth, so
you couldn't see it. He'd evidently been there a long time, the floor was
full of bones of fish he'd caught in the pool, and there was a bit of root
like a stick half gnawed through. He'd been potted, and got two bullet
wounds in the thigh; but he could walk already. It's evident he was just
waiting till we were gone, to clear off after his people. He'd got that
beastly scurvy look a nigger gets when he hasn't had anything to eat for a
long time.

"Well, they hauled him up before the Captain, of course; and he blew and
swore, and said the nigger was a spy, and was to be hanged tomorrow; he'd
hang him tonight, only the big troop might catch us up this evening, so
he'd wait to hear what the Colonel said; but if they didn't come he'd hang
him first thing tomorrow morning, or have him shot, as sure as the sun
rose. He made the fellows tie him up to that little tree before his tent,
with riems round his legs, and riems round his waist, and a riem round his
neck."

"What did the native say?" asked the Englishman.

"Oh, he didn't say anything. There wasn't a soul in the camp could have