CHAPTER ELEVEN.
ANOTHER SEARCH.
"That's just what I'm going to do, Master Anson," was the reply, given sternly.
"All right," said Anson nonchalantly.

"Search away; but, if I was in the police and had a good tip given me as to where the plunder I was after had been planted, I don't think I should waste time hunting blind leads, and letting the real culprits have plenty of time to get away." "But then you are not in the police, sir," said the superintendent, with a nod.

"So first of all I'll let my men run over you and your Kaffirs." "Wait till I've lit a cigar first," said Anson, taking out a case, and then laughing, for the police officer was watching him keenly.

"That's right; there are three or four diamonds in every one of these cigars, and as I smoke you'll notice that I don't burn much of the end I light, but that I keep on biting off bits of the leaf till I get to the diamonds, and then I swallow them." He held out his cigar-case, and the superintendent took it and began to feel the cigars, till Anson burst out laughing.
"Don't pinch them too hard," he cried, "or you'll break them, and then they won't draw." The officer returned the cigar-case with an angry ejaculation, and glanced round as if hesitating where to begin, while the horses of his men began to imitate the action of the oxen, nibbling away at the rich grass surrounding the pleasant spring.
"I say, Robert," said Anson, and the superintendent started at the familiar nickname: "I'd look smart over the business, for the Boers have been here lately to water their horses, and if they should by any chance come back it might mean a journey for you and your men to Pretoria." "And you too, if they did come," said the officer surlily.
"Oh, I don't know," said Anson airily.

"I don't believe they would stop a man with an empty wagon going south on a peaceful journey." "They'd take you and your wagon and span, sir," said the officer sternly.
"Look here, I don't believe the Boers would behave half so badly to me as my own people have done.