This was scarcely probable, it is true, but it might be so, and however cruel suspense may be, it is at least less absolutely crushing than the dead weight of certainty.
One Sunday--it was just a week since the letter came--Bessie was sitting after dinner on the verandah, when her quick ears caught what she took to be the booming of heavy guns far away on the Drakensberg.

She rose, and leaving the house, climbed the hill behind it.

On reaching its top she stood and looked at the great solemn stretch of mountains.

Away, a little to her right, was a square precipitous peak called Majuba, which was generally clothed in clouds.

To-day, however, there was no mist, and it seemed to her that it was from the direction of this peak that the faint rolling sounds came floating on the breeze.