for forty years. Then the reports of a stray wanderer, that the Magatese were numerous as the sands of the sea and rich in flocks and herds, tempted the Pretoria Government to send a small expedition to collect the arrears of hut-tax which had never yet been paid. "Slim" Piet Joubert was intrusted with the mission.

"Are you Paul Kruger?" demanded Magato.

The general explained that he was but a sort of headman to that potentate.

"Go back," said the chief. "Tell Paul Kruger I do not have dealings with indunas. If he wishes to talk to me, let him come himself."

From that day Magato was left in undisturbed possession of his beautiful country, fenced by the fever-haunted Limpopo, the inhospitable mountains of the Murchison Range, and the terror inspired by a truculent chief who had the courage of his convictions, and had not hesitated to tie up to his own waggon and flog a trader who foolishly ventured into the forbidden land with a load of liquor.

But despite precautions, now and then a bold Boer would look on the fruitful land from a distance and return, like the spies of Joshua, with glowing reports to his countrymen, with the result that tentative efforts were made by adventurous Europeans to get a footing in the region. Early in the chapter Magato had granted leave to two or three desirables to establish stores for the benefit of the natives, and they enjoyed

and grew rich on a monopoly that was the envy of every trader in South Africa. Their visits to civilisation were few, one of them, the richest and most influential, not having left his place for a quarter of a century. Hartley had gone up as the protégé of this favourite of royalty, and during a stay of several weeks had learned something that had inspired his dreams ever since.

"He was hungering for a machine-gun when I was there," said Hartley. "He had begun to get fearful through the attempts of white men to force themselves on him, and he knew that sooner or later he would have to defend his country against the Boers. He had tried to get a gun up through his traders; but they have been so long away from white men that they didn't know how to set to work. I hear his son 'Mpefu, who is chief now, is quite as keen on getting a machine-gun, and is prepared to give a calabash of diamonds for one.'

"Where do the stones come from?" Wilmot inquired.

"Not from the country, but from Kimberley. Many of his Kafirs go to the mines to work, and when they return they often make the chief a present of a stolen diamond. Most of these Kafir chiefs have thousands of stones got in this way, and all South Africans know it, and have their eyes on them; but these Kafirs are no fools-they know the value of the stones as well as we do, and, what is more, they know how to take care of them."

Hartley went on to explain

that as soon as he had verified the exact nature of Wilmot's discovery he would despatch a messenger to 'Mpefu, now the reigning chief, and find out if the ambition of the dead chief was his. He had no doubt what the answer would be; the only difficulty was the delivery of the gun.

"And now you know all about the market for the goods, let us see the samples," said he; and they arranged to visit the cutting as soon as the Kafirs of the camp were asleep.

"We shall have to do our own work," he explained, "for this secret is too important to trust to a nigger."

It was ten o'clock before Hartley deemed it safe to collect the few tools necessary and leave the camp.

Half an hour later they stood in the cutting with a Maxim gun and twenty boxes of ammunition gladdening their eyes.

"I can read this business like a book," said Hartley, when he had exhausted his vocabulary of expressions of delight. "This goon has been found where it was first hidden, which I reckon was somewhere on the East Rand, and and has been brought here by the finder. That means we are not alone in this secret. A thing like this is not likely to be left long unguarded. The chances are that some one over in the Dorp yonder is keeping an eye on this spot, so we must be sharp and get the lot away to my camp. There are а dozen ready-made cuttings there where we can hide it safely."

The gun itself was no great weight, but the ammunition, which Hartley estimated at a hundred thousand rounds, was a formidable load, and would require several journeys of the cart. Wilmot was left in charge of the treasure while his companion returned to camp for the means of transport. He killed the long waiting by replacing the canvas covering on the gun. Whoever had originally done the work knew his business. The metal work had been well oiled and covered with some preservative, and the various parts carefully marked and numbered for refitting, and arranged in parcels of a convenient size for handling. The cartridges were contained in twenty stout boxes about eighteen inches square, and each required the strength of two men to lift, the whole find weighing little short of two tons, which would have to be removed in small loads by a onehorse cart over the roadless rugged veld.

Wilmot's jubilation cooled as he realised the magnitude of the task that had to be performed in a space of time that was dangerously brief, for the night was short and Kafir eyesight long.

The silence and solitude excited his nerves, and imagination magnified the gentle whispering of the wind into the swish of footsteps in the long grass. He went outside and peered through the darkness, but saw only the feeble glow in the atmosphere from the electric lights of the mines, and heard

the sullen rumble of the never ceasing battery stamps two miles away, like the moan of sea waves on a shingly shore. A long weary hour passed before he heard the welcome sound of wheels in the distance. Hartley arrived with the cart, and the work of loading up began.

The eastern horizon had turned amber before the fourth and last load was on its way to camp, and an early Kafir or two were driving in cattle from their grazing-ground near the Dorp when the cart with its illicit load was climbing the ridge that hid its goal.

Once on his own ground, Hartley showed none of the perturbation that he had manifested during the progress of the transportation. He called up his Kafirs to help to bury the cases in a cutting, explaining that dynamite was dangerous after sunrise, and that deep burial was the only safeguard against explosion-an explanation amply sufficing to account for the night's work, for the natives' terror of dynamite is universal among all who had worked on mines.

A few hours' sleep and a late breakfast, augmented by a bottle of whisky procured from the Dorp, fitted both men for a quiet discussion of the plan of campaign, that, when put to alter into operation, was the course of their lives. Hartley had all the details ready, much to the surprise of Wilmot, for he was not aware that the running of a gun had for years been one of the schemes that occupied that occupied the

VOL. CLXXVI.-NO. MLXIX.

imaginative periods of his partner's dreams, or that he had long been prepared with every necessary save the gun. The materialising of that had, in truth, come much more as a pleasure than a surprise, as is generally true of such cheerful optimists as he. It is an article of their faith that fortune must come soon or late; the manner and form of its coming interests them but little.

He then settled down to the consideration of ways and means with business-like address.

"This business, like every other, needs money to start it," said Hartley. "I have figured it out that by the time we start our trek northwards we shall have to handle at least a couple of hundred pounds. You have nothing; I have very little more than you. I shall be on this job about eight weeks longer, and if I am lucky and good, and keep away from the Dorp, I shall leave with about a hundred pounds. In the meantime I shall find you a job, so that if you don't save anything you won't have to live on our capital. By the end of three months something is certain to have turned up, for I can see my luck is in.'

"What do you mean by our capital?" Wilmot asked. "I have nothing.'

"Aren't we partners?" Hartley demanded. "What I may have is as much yours now as mine. Haven't you found the goon? That's your part of the contract; mine is to get it to where it will do the most

2 R

ON the North-West Frontier of India the old order has of recent years changed, giving place to a new, and, let us hope, better, state of government, both civil and military. For not only has a new province been carved out of the old Punjab, but the year 1903, or perhaps more correctly the financial year 1902-3, saw the last of the Punjab Frontier Force, or, as it was originally called, the Punjab Irregular Force, or briefly the P.F.F. For more than fifty years it had guarded our border, doing in that time more hard marching and fighting than probably any body of troops in the world in a like period. As an administrative unit it has now ceased to exist. On the 31st March 1903 it expired, and its obsequies were celebrated at Abbottabad, the old headquarters, by a dinner in the Gurkha mess, where, amid much good fellowship and singing of "Auld lang syne," hopes were expressed of a speedy resur

rection.

The Force had lived an eventful life of more than half a century, but recently signs were not wanting that its continuance was more or less an anachronism. Other regiments had come to the frontier, and the border-line itself had extended far beyond the limits for which the Force was organised. Not only its officers

but its rank and file had gone to continue their active career in other parts of the world; and in West and Central Africa, in Uganda and other similar places, men of the P.F.F. regiments had earned distinotion, and had brought back to their homes in the Punjab or Tirah hard-earned rupees and stories of wild outlandish places. Then in the China campaign of 1900 two of the infantry infantry battalions of the Force had gone with the allied armies, and another battalion had gone to Somaliland, thus showing that the the military authorities intended the Force to be no longer local but Imperial in the broadest sense of the word.

The Punjab Frontier Force consisted at first of five regiments of cavalry, the Corps of Guides, the Sind Camel Corps, five regiments of infantry, three field and two garrison batteries, and two companies of sappers. Latterly it consisted of four cavalry regiments, the Corps of Guides (cavalry and infantry), ten battalions of infantry, four mountain batteries, and one garrison battery. The successive generals who have held the much-coveted command of this splendid body have been, as a rule, men of early frontier experience, and the list of their names prises some of the best and most celebrated of our Indian

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