Story 11.

Story 11.A Queer Race.“Who’s that man?” asked George Marshall of his friend Joe Warton, a Kimberley digger, as a slightly-made, good-looking man, dressed in a well-fitting suit of tweeds, which no colonial tailor could have turned out, walked past them as they were sitting on the stoop of the club.“That man! why he is the hero of the day—our last distinguished visitor, Sir Harry Ferriard. You will hear all about him if you are long on the Fields, for every one is talking about him.”“Sir Harry Ferriard! why he is the crack gentleman rider and owner of race-horses; the man who won last year’s ‘Grand National,’ what’s he doing up in Kimberley, of all places in the world?” asked George Marshall, looking through the door of the club at the gentleman in question with some interest.“He is going a trip into the interior, when some friends of his for whom he is waiting arrive. I wish they would come and he were off, for I am sick of the sight of him. Since his arrival the camp in general has begun to take an interest in the British aristocracy. The proprietor of the club has procured a big ‘Peerage and Baronetage,’ which is always in use. Sir Harry of an evening tells stories of his friend Lord This, and the Duchess of Something Else, till one feels sick. Little Lazarus picked him up coming here in the coach. He likes you to think that he knew him at home, and that he is a fair sample of the pals he made in London. The little cad is as proud as a peacock of his friend Sir Harry, and is never tired of drawing him out and showing him off.”“Shouldn’t have thought they’d have stood much of that sort of thing here,” said Marshall. “We have our faults, and perhaps our weaknesses, but I never would have said snobbishness was one of them.”“Well, we are a very ‘English community,’ as they are always saying in the papers. Besides, this fellow Ferriard makes himself infernally pleasant to every one, and half the fellows in the camp think they are going to get something out of him. Says that he has been turning his attention to the city and financial business lately, and that now he is out here he may as well take a look round and see what investments are sticking out. That makes him popular, you bet. He says he sees that Fools’ Rush might be turned into a company, and floated as a big thing on the London markets. Thinks there is a fortune for any one who would buy up the shares in the Diddler Diamond Mining Company. He is going to make home capital flow into the place, and every one is to be better off even than they were in the wildest days of the share mania. Then he is very friendly to every one—asks you to stay with him at Melton the first winter you are in England, before he has known you for an hour. And tells you about the shooting he will give you in Norfolk, and his moor in Scotland. The men all swear by him, and the women think that there never was any one like him, confound him!”“You don’t appear to like him, Joe, as much as the rest of ’em do,” said Marshall, after he had listened to his friend’s unusually long speech.“Like him! I think him an infernal outsider; but I see he has settled down to play at poker, so I will go down to the Shorts’, as he won’t be hanging about there making himself a nuisance, as he generally does of an evening.”“Does Polly Short find him such a nuisance then? Looks the sort of man who could make himself pretty agreeable.”Warton answered by a growl rather than by any articulate speech, and George Marshall laughed to himself. It was not difficult to diagnose his friend’s case, and guess why he did not particularly Ike the new arrival.Polly Short was the prettiest girl on the Diamond Fields, and a good many men had been more or less in love with her, but Joe Warton had begun to be looked upon as the favourite. In fact, the other candidates had almost given up all hope; and Joe, though he was not exactly engaged, was supposed to have arrived at a very fair understanding with her. She, though she had not much harm in her, was decidedly fond of admiration; while Joe Warton, though he was a capital good fellow, was a little heavy in hand; and his great affection for Polly sometimes showed itself in fits of jealousy, which were as near surliness as they could be. Given a man like the brilliant Sir Harry Ferriard, and let him admire Polly as he well might—for she would be an unusually pretty girl, not only on the Diamond Fields, but anywhere else—it would be easy to understand, so George Marshall thought, how the course of his friend’s true love should have got a little tangled.“By the by, shall you ride Lone Star for her gallop to-morrow?” Joe Warton said to his friend after he had got up. “We shall win the Ladies’ Purse with her again this year, seems to me.”“Yes, if nothing else is entered that can beat us,” Marshall, who was a man not much given to express a decided opinion, answered.Lone Star belonged to Joe Warton, and had been for some time in training, for the forthcoming Kimberley races, on George Marshall’s farm. He had brought her into Kimberley the day before. She was a very nice mare, but of no particular class. Warton had, however, won The Ladies’ Purse, one of the minor races, with her the year before, and he had set his heart on winning the same race again that year.“Wait till the entries are published and then I will tell you whether we shall win or no. The mare is fit enough as far as that goes, and she’s a good bit honester than most of her sex, but she is no wonder,” Marshall added.“Oh, they won’t enter anything better than Lone Star—it wouldn’t be worth their while when the winner is to be sold for fifty pounds,” Warton said as he got up, and saying “good night” to his friend, walked up the street in the direction of the Shorts’ house.As luck would have it, however, it chanced that he saw a man he knew, whom he wished to speak to, in the bar of a hotel he was passing. So he went in and said what he had to say to him, and was going to leave when a certain Mr Howlett appeared on the scene—who about the race meeting became an important individual on the Fields. He was called in the papers “our leading local bookmaker.” He came into the bar, and seeing Warton began to talk to him about the races.“Is that mare of yours, Lone Star, going to go for anything this time? You were lucky to win with her last year,” Mr Howlett said, looking at Joe in a way that somehow or other annoyed him.“Lucky! what do you mean by that?” Joe asked; “she won easy enough; what would you like to bet against her winning again?”“Well, it’s full early to talk about betting, but I shouldn’t mind just backing my opinion as I gave it. Though it ain’t business, I will lay you fifty to twenty-five.”It happened from one cause and another that Warton was in an half-irritable, half-excited humour—when it’s a relief to do anything. He thought to himself that at the start it would as likely as not be odds on Lone Star, so he took the bet. Mr Howlett booked it with a twinkle in his eye that annoyed Warton.“You’re one of the sort who are always in a hurry; take the advice of one who knows a bit more than you do, and wait a bit in future,” Mr Howlett said.The man’s manner irritated Warton strangely. “Like to go on with it, as it’s such a bad bet for me?” he said.Mr Howlett at first said he didn’t want to go on with it. It wasn’t business to bet before he knew the horses entered. He only had offered a bit of advice to Warton which was meant to be friendly, and if he didn’t take it friendly he could take it how he chose.Presently, however, he appeared to get irritated too by something some one else said, and it ended by his first doubling the bet, and then laying Warton three fifties to two against his horse.As Warton walked on to the Shorts’ he was half inclined to think that it would have been better for him if he had taken the bookmaker’s advice, and not been in such a hurry. The entries would be published the next morning, and he might just as well have waited before he made his bet. He might have guessed that Howlett, though he did seem at first unwilling to bet, was not the sort of man who would throw away his money merely because he got warm in a dispute.When he bet against Lone Star he must have had an idea of some other horse being entered which could beat her. Still Warton thought he knew pretty well the horses entered for the race. It was then limited to colonial-bred horses, and he was sure that there was nothing to beat him.The Short family consisted of the father, mother, and one daughter—the fair Polly. Old Tom Short was a taciturn old gentleman, who spent his evenings sitting in the corner of the stoop of his house, with a glass of whiskey-and-water before him, and a pipe in his mouth—now and then growling out some remark about the wages of the Kaffirs, the price of wood, or other subjects connected with the winning of diamonds. He met with his wife during a visit to England, after he made some money on the Australian gold-fields. If he had since repented of his bargain he kept it to himself. She in her way was a very fine lady, being the daughter of a bankrupt grocer, but also the half great-niece of a London alderman, who had been knighted. The alderman’s picture always hung on the wall in the drawing-room of their house, and Mrs Short generally found an excuse for referring to it, when strangers were present, at least once in ten minutes. As one looked at Polly Short one wondered how she could have been the child of her parents, and where she could have got all her beauty and charm from, and the keen sense of humour that gave a mischievous twinkle to her eyes. Her love of admiration might have come from her mother, and she had, for all her dainty beauty, a curious look of her rugged old father. But there was much about her which seemed incongruous with her surroundings. When Warton came in he thought that he detected a considerable diminution in the cordiality of Mrs Short’s greeting. Once he had been rather a favourite visitor, but since Sir Harry Ferriard had come on the scene, he had noticed a decided alteration.“How do you do, Mr Warton, we ’alf expects Sir ’Arry would drop in this evening—have you seen him?”“I don’t think you will see him to-night, I just saw him setting down to a game of cards,” answered Warton, whose expression by no means brightened up when he heard Ferriard’s name as soon as he came into the house.“Dear, dear, it’s a pity he is so fond of play and gambling. But there, it’s a weakness of the aristocracy; they are ’igh spirited, and must ’ave excitement, as I know only too well!” Mrs Short gave a sigh and looked at the picture.“He won’t hurt himself at it, I fancy,” Warton said with rather a snarl. “From what I hear he has been rather a heavy winner.”“Well, somebody must win at cards, and I don’t see why you should sneer at any one who happens to be fortunate, as if there was anything wrong about it,” said Polly, resenting rather the tone of Warton’s remark than the actual words.“You’re quite right; I am sure I don’t wish to say anything against him, everybody seems to like him very well, and all I know is more or less in his favour,” Warton answered, feeling somewhat ashamed of himself for having spoken rather unfairly about a man whom he disliked.He did not quite make his peace though, and the visit did not seem likely to be a very happy one. After some time he began to talk about the races. Polly had worked the purse in which the stakes for “the ladies’ prize” were to be given to the winner, and this was the secret of his being so anxious to gain it.“You will be glad to hear your favourite, Lone Star, is very fit—I am going to gain that smart purse this year again, I hope,” he said after some time.“Are you sure you’ll win? I don’t think you will. Do you know, I shall make my bets the other way.”“Surely you’re not going to bet against Lone Star?” Warton said, remembering how pleased she was at his success the year before and feeling a good deal hurt at her words.“Sir Harry Ferriard tells me he is sure to win—he rides for Mr Lascelles, who has entered Induna.”“What! has that little—I mean has Lazarus entered Induna for the Ladies’ Purse? why he told me he was not entering him for anything but the two big races. It’s a shame, and a low trick of his,” Warton said, remembering with anything but pleasure the bets he had just made.“Sir Harry persuaded him to do it because he wanted a mount in the race. I thought it very nice of him, considering he has won so many races in England, to wish to win our Purse here.”“Yes, and a speech he made about it too,” struck in Mrs Short, smiling encouragingly at her daughter; “he said that he had never coveted any prize so much as the purse our Polly had worked, and that he had made Mr Lascelles promise that if he won he was to keep it. Ah! after all it’s only the real titled classes that can pay compliments with grace, as well I remember was the case in dear Uncle Sir Peter’s time!”“Well, after that I can hardly hope that you can wish me success, though I think you might have kept some kindly feeling for old Lone Star,” Warton said as he got up to go.“Well, you see, you don’t ride yourself, and Mr Marshall rides for you, and he never speaks to a lady if he can help it, so you must allow me to wish Sir Harry to win,” Polly said, as she shook hands with him.“Of course you may wish who you like to win; and what’s more, you will have what you wish for, for Lone Star won’t have a chance against Induna,” he said, as he left the house.Polly watched him go through the garden, and listened to the tread of his feet as he walked away along the road. His very walk seemed to tell how angry and hurt he was. For a minute or two she felt a little guilty and sorry. After all she liked him a good deal. Though he was heavy and perhaps a little stupid, and at times by no means sweet-tempered, he was a good honest fellow and perfectly devoted to her. To tell the truth she had been upset by the attentions of her new admirer, Sir Harry. She was not more silly than most girls of her age, but she could not help thinking that the element of romance which was wanting in Joe Warton was present in the other. When she looked at Sir Harry’s good-looking face she told herself that he could care a good deal more for a woman than Joe could. Then he had a title and two or three places in England, and if she married him she would live in London and be in society, instead of living on the Diamond Fields, and that counted for a good deal with her, as it naturally would with a high-spirited girl who had plenty of ambition and wish to see the world. She knew that colonial girls had married Englishmen of family and gone home and held their own there, and she did not see why she could not do it.Warton went round to his friend Marshall’s house, and found him turning in.When he told the latter what he had done about Lone Star, and what he had heard about Induna being entered by Mr Lazarus, or Lascelles, as that gentleman had taken to call himself since he had made money on the Diamond Fields, he got very little sympathy.“You must have been a fool to have backed the mare before you knew the entries. Believed Lazarus would not enter Induna because he said he was not going to, why he would sell his brother to please his friend Sir Harry; besides, he is not above a robbery on his own account. And as for its not paying them to enter the horse, and to have to buy it in, why they can back it for a good bit. Probably Howlett was doing it for them when he laid you those bets,” said Marshall.“Do you think we have any chance? I should like to beat that fellow Ferriard.”“Chance! devil a bit; no race is a certainty till the jockey is weighed in, and it’s all right. But this goes pretty near one.”Warton went off greatly irritated with himself, and very much cut up and pained about Polly Short’s treatment of him. When he got back to his house he sat for some time in a chair outside his house, smoking and thinking over the unpleasant events of the evening. He had half gone to sleep when he was woke up by hearing the voices of two men, who were passing along the road on the side of the reed fence round his garden.“Waste my time, do you say? don’t see it—why we haven’t done badly to-night, or this week either; and one can’t be always at business. What’s life without sentiment, my dear Bill?”“All right, we ain’t done so bad to-night, only it’s a bit rilin’ when one sees a chance of getting up a bit of Poker or Loo to find that you’re hanging after that girl and out of the way.”The first speaker spoke in the tones of an educated man and a gentleman. The second voice was a loud, gruff one, and seemed to belong to some one in a lower grade of society.Joe Warton somehow thought he knew both voices, so he got up and looked over the fence. He found that the men had parted company; one had turned down a road and was out of sight; the other he could see. He was a heavily built man over six feet high, and Warton recognised him as a man called McNeil, who had not been long in Kimberley. He was rather a rough sort of fellow, who had knocked about the world a good deal. He professed to have come out to look at the mines, and report on them for a syndicate of capitalists at home. He was a good deal at the club, though some members thought him rather a doubtful character. The queer thing was, that Joe could not help suspecting that he had recognised in the other voice that of Ferriard. He remembered that Ferriard, though he was friendly enough to most men, had been rather standoffish to McNeil, and professed some surprise at meeting a man like him in a club, though he had afterwards played cards with him on several occasions, as they both seemed to have a keen taste for play. Yet if Warton’s suspicions were right, the two men seemed to be on the most confidential footing. After all he was not sure. He had no reason to suspect that Ferriard was not perfectlybonâ fideand straight, and because he disliked the man and was jealous of him, he ought to be all the more careful not to spread injurious reports about him. It was no business of his, and he would not mix himself up in it, he thought, as he undressed and went to bed.When the day of the races came, Joe Warton’s chances of winning the Ladies’ Purse did not look any more hopeful than they were when the entries were published; nor had he managed to hedge any of the money he had put on Lone Star.The public considered that it was a certainty for Induna, and it was generally thought that Mr Lascelles had been somewhat greedy and unsportsmanlike in entering his horse for the minor event, instead of trying to win one of the big ones. However, Mr Lascelles had joined his forces with some other owners, and had settled to take a share in the stakes they might win, instead of opposing them with Induna, one of the fastest horses ever bred in the colony, and one which several good judges thought might at the weights have a chance of beating the imported horses in the two principal handicaps. Men grumbled and said that the races were being made a cut and dried affair of, but Mr Lascelles did not care, so long as he was backed up by his friend Ferriard, about whom he swaggered and boasted more and more every day. He liked to think that Ferriard was going to ride for him. The race would be reported in the home papers, and there would be a crop of paragraphs about it, and the world in general would learn that Sir Harry Ferriard had sported his, Mr Lascelles, colours.If Joe Warton’s chances of winning the race looked hopeless, his chances of winning what he cared a great deal more about, namely Polly Short’s affections, seemed to be almost as small. Their quarrel had grown more serious during the last few days. The Kimberley Race Ball had taken place, and Joe had attended it. He had not asked Polly to dance with him, and though he was an awkward dancer enough, generally managing to get her more or less torn and in trouble, she was none the less inclined to be angry with him for taking so little notice of her. At the same time Ferriard’s attentions had been very marked, and people were canvassing her chances of becoming Lady Ferriard. A good many of her friends laughed at the idea of his being such a fool as to bring home a bride from the Diamond Fields, but they did not know as much as Polly did, as she sat on the grand stand watching the horses entered for the Ladies’ Purse. The day before Ferriard had asked her to marry him, but his proposal had been a somewhat strange one. He had just received a cablegram he said, which made it necessary for him to put off his trip up country and start for England almost at once, and he wanted her to marry him in a week’s time and go home with him. Now that she had to make up her mind she felt half afraid. It had come so suddenly. Though she felt certain that Ferriard was in love with her, she felt somehow that she was doubtful whether she did not like her old lover best.As she watched old Lone Star being saddled, and saw Joe Warton looking glum and out of spirits, she experienced a feeling of something like remorse. After all old friends were surest, she thought.Lone Star had not many supporters. The old mare had won a good many races on the Diamond Fields, and his owner was one of the most popular men there. Little Lazarus might just as well have run Induna in one of the other races, and left the Ladies’ Purse for Lone Star, and one or two others, who would have had a fair chance. But there is no sentiment about betting, and the bookmakers’ cry of “Odds bar one, eight to one bar one, ten to one bar one!” met with very few responses. One or two men took the odds to a few sovereigns on the off-chance. People on the Diamond Fields are as a rule great believers in the off-chance. Still Joe Warton himself said he did not think he could win, and he advised his friends to leave it alone.“Beg your pardon, sir, but will you let me have a look through your race-glasses for a second?” said a grey-haired, elderly-looking man, whom Joe never remembered having seen before, and who had just bustled into the grand stand, just as the horses were going down to the starting-post. “That black is the horse Sir Harry Ferriard rides, isn’t it? blue and yellow cap? Thank you, sir, I’ve seen what I want,” he added, with rather a satisfied air, as he gave the glasses back again to Warton.“That’s the horse which will win,” Joe said, as he took the glasses.“So they all seem to think, but maybe it isn’t one of Sir Harry’s lucky days,” the grey-haired man answered, as he bustled away, and Warton saw him in a second or two afterwards speaking rather earnestly to an inspector of police, who was in the ring. Whatever the grey-haired man had to say, seemed to surprise the latter a good deal.“All right, in the weighing-room after the race. It will be done neatly and quietly, and no fuss; and a very pretty little bit of business it will be,” the grey-haired man said, as he bustled away, and he seemed to leave the inspector with something to do, for the latter at once went and spoke to one of the mounted men.Joe Warton was Wondering who the grey-haired man was, when he noticed that after he had spoken to the inspector he passed closed to McNeil, the man whom he had recognised the night before outside his garden. The latter seemed also, so Warton thought, to be a good deal interested in the grey-haired man. In fact, he would have wagered, from the expression of his face, that he recognised the stranger.However, Joe Warton did not bother himself any more about them, for just then there was a cry of “They’re off!” He was not long in suspense. “Induna wins!” was shouted out before the horses had got a furlong.“Lone Star is coming up—No, it’s no good, she can’t catch Induna,” Warton said, as he put his glasses back in their case, for the race was practically over.Polly Short looked at the race and felt that she was sorry, and that she would give a good deal to see old Lone Star win and that Joe should have the purse she had worked, though she supposed he would not care much for it now.It was about as tame a race as could be seen, but as the winner passed the post, followed by Lone Star, a somewhat startling incident occurred. The grey-haired man who had borrowed Warton’s glass, had not gone up to the stand; McNeil also had stopped below and stood just behind him. Suddenly he sprang forward, seized the grey-haired man under his two arms and lifted him clean up into the air, at the same time shouting in a voice that could be heard all over the course,—“Jim! Slim Jim! ride like hell! look here! Old Sharp has come out after you!”“Hullo! what’s the matter with Sir Harry? he don’t seem to be able to stop the horse. Why, he’s going round twice—no he ain’t! Where the deuce is he going?” said Mr Lascelles, as he saw his horse shoot out from a canter into a gallop, and dash past the paddock at a racing pace. “Well, that’s a rum way to finish a race! I suppose it’s what they do at the club meeting where he rides at home. But I don’t see the sense of it.”Mr Lascelles’ astonishment increased considerably as he saw a mounted policeman set off in hot pursuit of the winner.“He’s gone mad! He can’t stop the horse! He’s got a sunstroke! He don’t know where the winning-post is!” were the opinions shouted out by the lookers-on.“What price against the peeler?” called out some one in the ring. To which there was an answering yell of “Any odds!”“He knows where he’s going to finish—it’s Stella Land he is making for, and my opinion is he will get there, for none of our men have anything that will catch him,” the Kimberley inspector said, and he looked at the grey-haired man with grim smile.“Where is that man who interfered with me? Ah, it’s you, is it?” the latter said as he saw McNeil, who was straining his eyes at the race, not on the card, which was now taking place; “so you knew me, did you? I fancy I know you.”“Know you, old man! I’d have known yer made into soup. Glad you remember me, for you’ve no old accounts against me,” the big man answered cheerily enough.In the mean time George Marshall, the rider of Lone Star, had gone to the weighing-room.“I’ll weigh in at once, I think; and I fancy old Lone Star has won this race after all, for Sir Harry Ferriard won’t pass the scales unless he loses the race he is riding now, and it’s long odds on him for that,” he said to the stewards who were superintending there.The rider of Induna, Sir Harry Ferriard,aliasSlim Jim,aliasCaptain Barton,alias et cetera, never did come back to weigh in. He never came back to Kimberley at all.Mr Lascelles never saw his aristocratic acquaintance or his horse Induna again. The former turned out to be a well-known criminal, who was wanted by the London police for a heavy Bill forgery case. Inspector Sharp of Scotland Yard had tracked him out to the Diamond Fields, and just arrived by the coach in time to get up to the racecourse and see him go down to the start on Induna.The inspector does not often speak about that trip to South Africa, which he hoped would have been such a successful episode in his professional career. He has a mean opinion of a country where a fast horse enables a fugitive to get away from the police.Joe Warton won the bets he was in such a hurry to make, and he spent the money in furnishing a house for Pretty Polly Short, who became Mrs Warton after all. She told him that before the sensational end of that queer race she had determined to give up the idea of becoming Lady Ferriard, on the chance of making it up with him again, and he believed her.

“Who’s that man?” asked George Marshall of his friend Joe Warton, a Kimberley digger, as a slightly-made, good-looking man, dressed in a well-fitting suit of tweeds, which no colonial tailor could have turned out, walked past them as they were sitting on the stoop of the club.

“That man! why he is the hero of the day—our last distinguished visitor, Sir Harry Ferriard. You will hear all about him if you are long on the Fields, for every one is talking about him.”

“Sir Harry Ferriard! why he is the crack gentleman rider and owner of race-horses; the man who won last year’s ‘Grand National,’ what’s he doing up in Kimberley, of all places in the world?” asked George Marshall, looking through the door of the club at the gentleman in question with some interest.

“He is going a trip into the interior, when some friends of his for whom he is waiting arrive. I wish they would come and he were off, for I am sick of the sight of him. Since his arrival the camp in general has begun to take an interest in the British aristocracy. The proprietor of the club has procured a big ‘Peerage and Baronetage,’ which is always in use. Sir Harry of an evening tells stories of his friend Lord This, and the Duchess of Something Else, till one feels sick. Little Lazarus picked him up coming here in the coach. He likes you to think that he knew him at home, and that he is a fair sample of the pals he made in London. The little cad is as proud as a peacock of his friend Sir Harry, and is never tired of drawing him out and showing him off.”

“Shouldn’t have thought they’d have stood much of that sort of thing here,” said Marshall. “We have our faults, and perhaps our weaknesses, but I never would have said snobbishness was one of them.”

“Well, we are a very ‘English community,’ as they are always saying in the papers. Besides, this fellow Ferriard makes himself infernally pleasant to every one, and half the fellows in the camp think they are going to get something out of him. Says that he has been turning his attention to the city and financial business lately, and that now he is out here he may as well take a look round and see what investments are sticking out. That makes him popular, you bet. He says he sees that Fools’ Rush might be turned into a company, and floated as a big thing on the London markets. Thinks there is a fortune for any one who would buy up the shares in the Diddler Diamond Mining Company. He is going to make home capital flow into the place, and every one is to be better off even than they were in the wildest days of the share mania. Then he is very friendly to every one—asks you to stay with him at Melton the first winter you are in England, before he has known you for an hour. And tells you about the shooting he will give you in Norfolk, and his moor in Scotland. The men all swear by him, and the women think that there never was any one like him, confound him!”

“You don’t appear to like him, Joe, as much as the rest of ’em do,” said Marshall, after he had listened to his friend’s unusually long speech.

“Like him! I think him an infernal outsider; but I see he has settled down to play at poker, so I will go down to the Shorts’, as he won’t be hanging about there making himself a nuisance, as he generally does of an evening.”

“Does Polly Short find him such a nuisance then? Looks the sort of man who could make himself pretty agreeable.”

Warton answered by a growl rather than by any articulate speech, and George Marshall laughed to himself. It was not difficult to diagnose his friend’s case, and guess why he did not particularly Ike the new arrival.

Polly Short was the prettiest girl on the Diamond Fields, and a good many men had been more or less in love with her, but Joe Warton had begun to be looked upon as the favourite. In fact, the other candidates had almost given up all hope; and Joe, though he was not exactly engaged, was supposed to have arrived at a very fair understanding with her. She, though she had not much harm in her, was decidedly fond of admiration; while Joe Warton, though he was a capital good fellow, was a little heavy in hand; and his great affection for Polly sometimes showed itself in fits of jealousy, which were as near surliness as they could be. Given a man like the brilliant Sir Harry Ferriard, and let him admire Polly as he well might—for she would be an unusually pretty girl, not only on the Diamond Fields, but anywhere else—it would be easy to understand, so George Marshall thought, how the course of his friend’s true love should have got a little tangled.

“By the by, shall you ride Lone Star for her gallop to-morrow?” Joe Warton said to his friend after he had got up. “We shall win the Ladies’ Purse with her again this year, seems to me.”

“Yes, if nothing else is entered that can beat us,” Marshall, who was a man not much given to express a decided opinion, answered.

Lone Star belonged to Joe Warton, and had been for some time in training, for the forthcoming Kimberley races, on George Marshall’s farm. He had brought her into Kimberley the day before. She was a very nice mare, but of no particular class. Warton had, however, won The Ladies’ Purse, one of the minor races, with her the year before, and he had set his heart on winning the same race again that year.

“Wait till the entries are published and then I will tell you whether we shall win or no. The mare is fit enough as far as that goes, and she’s a good bit honester than most of her sex, but she is no wonder,” Marshall added.

“Oh, they won’t enter anything better than Lone Star—it wouldn’t be worth their while when the winner is to be sold for fifty pounds,” Warton said as he got up, and saying “good night” to his friend, walked up the street in the direction of the Shorts’ house.

As luck would have it, however, it chanced that he saw a man he knew, whom he wished to speak to, in the bar of a hotel he was passing. So he went in and said what he had to say to him, and was going to leave when a certain Mr Howlett appeared on the scene—who about the race meeting became an important individual on the Fields. He was called in the papers “our leading local bookmaker.” He came into the bar, and seeing Warton began to talk to him about the races.

“Is that mare of yours, Lone Star, going to go for anything this time? You were lucky to win with her last year,” Mr Howlett said, looking at Joe in a way that somehow or other annoyed him.

“Lucky! what do you mean by that?” Joe asked; “she won easy enough; what would you like to bet against her winning again?”

“Well, it’s full early to talk about betting, but I shouldn’t mind just backing my opinion as I gave it. Though it ain’t business, I will lay you fifty to twenty-five.”

It happened from one cause and another that Warton was in an half-irritable, half-excited humour—when it’s a relief to do anything. He thought to himself that at the start it would as likely as not be odds on Lone Star, so he took the bet. Mr Howlett booked it with a twinkle in his eye that annoyed Warton.

“You’re one of the sort who are always in a hurry; take the advice of one who knows a bit more than you do, and wait a bit in future,” Mr Howlett said.

The man’s manner irritated Warton strangely. “Like to go on with it, as it’s such a bad bet for me?” he said.

Mr Howlett at first said he didn’t want to go on with it. It wasn’t business to bet before he knew the horses entered. He only had offered a bit of advice to Warton which was meant to be friendly, and if he didn’t take it friendly he could take it how he chose.

Presently, however, he appeared to get irritated too by something some one else said, and it ended by his first doubling the bet, and then laying Warton three fifties to two against his horse.

As Warton walked on to the Shorts’ he was half inclined to think that it would have been better for him if he had taken the bookmaker’s advice, and not been in such a hurry. The entries would be published the next morning, and he might just as well have waited before he made his bet. He might have guessed that Howlett, though he did seem at first unwilling to bet, was not the sort of man who would throw away his money merely because he got warm in a dispute.

When he bet against Lone Star he must have had an idea of some other horse being entered which could beat her. Still Warton thought he knew pretty well the horses entered for the race. It was then limited to colonial-bred horses, and he was sure that there was nothing to beat him.

The Short family consisted of the father, mother, and one daughter—the fair Polly. Old Tom Short was a taciturn old gentleman, who spent his evenings sitting in the corner of the stoop of his house, with a glass of whiskey-and-water before him, and a pipe in his mouth—now and then growling out some remark about the wages of the Kaffirs, the price of wood, or other subjects connected with the winning of diamonds. He met with his wife during a visit to England, after he made some money on the Australian gold-fields. If he had since repented of his bargain he kept it to himself. She in her way was a very fine lady, being the daughter of a bankrupt grocer, but also the half great-niece of a London alderman, who had been knighted. The alderman’s picture always hung on the wall in the drawing-room of their house, and Mrs Short generally found an excuse for referring to it, when strangers were present, at least once in ten minutes. As one looked at Polly Short one wondered how she could have been the child of her parents, and where she could have got all her beauty and charm from, and the keen sense of humour that gave a mischievous twinkle to her eyes. Her love of admiration might have come from her mother, and she had, for all her dainty beauty, a curious look of her rugged old father. But there was much about her which seemed incongruous with her surroundings. When Warton came in he thought that he detected a considerable diminution in the cordiality of Mrs Short’s greeting. Once he had been rather a favourite visitor, but since Sir Harry Ferriard had come on the scene, he had noticed a decided alteration.

“How do you do, Mr Warton, we ’alf expects Sir ’Arry would drop in this evening—have you seen him?”

“I don’t think you will see him to-night, I just saw him setting down to a game of cards,” answered Warton, whose expression by no means brightened up when he heard Ferriard’s name as soon as he came into the house.

“Dear, dear, it’s a pity he is so fond of play and gambling. But there, it’s a weakness of the aristocracy; they are ’igh spirited, and must ’ave excitement, as I know only too well!” Mrs Short gave a sigh and looked at the picture.

“He won’t hurt himself at it, I fancy,” Warton said with rather a snarl. “From what I hear he has been rather a heavy winner.”

“Well, somebody must win at cards, and I don’t see why you should sneer at any one who happens to be fortunate, as if there was anything wrong about it,” said Polly, resenting rather the tone of Warton’s remark than the actual words.

“You’re quite right; I am sure I don’t wish to say anything against him, everybody seems to like him very well, and all I know is more or less in his favour,” Warton answered, feeling somewhat ashamed of himself for having spoken rather unfairly about a man whom he disliked.

He did not quite make his peace though, and the visit did not seem likely to be a very happy one. After some time he began to talk about the races. Polly had worked the purse in which the stakes for “the ladies’ prize” were to be given to the winner, and this was the secret of his being so anxious to gain it.

“You will be glad to hear your favourite, Lone Star, is very fit—I am going to gain that smart purse this year again, I hope,” he said after some time.

“Are you sure you’ll win? I don’t think you will. Do you know, I shall make my bets the other way.”

“Surely you’re not going to bet against Lone Star?” Warton said, remembering how pleased she was at his success the year before and feeling a good deal hurt at her words.

“Sir Harry Ferriard tells me he is sure to win—he rides for Mr Lascelles, who has entered Induna.”

“What! has that little—I mean has Lazarus entered Induna for the Ladies’ Purse? why he told me he was not entering him for anything but the two big races. It’s a shame, and a low trick of his,” Warton said, remembering with anything but pleasure the bets he had just made.

“Sir Harry persuaded him to do it because he wanted a mount in the race. I thought it very nice of him, considering he has won so many races in England, to wish to win our Purse here.”

“Yes, and a speech he made about it too,” struck in Mrs Short, smiling encouragingly at her daughter; “he said that he had never coveted any prize so much as the purse our Polly had worked, and that he had made Mr Lascelles promise that if he won he was to keep it. Ah! after all it’s only the real titled classes that can pay compliments with grace, as well I remember was the case in dear Uncle Sir Peter’s time!”

“Well, after that I can hardly hope that you can wish me success, though I think you might have kept some kindly feeling for old Lone Star,” Warton said as he got up to go.

“Well, you see, you don’t ride yourself, and Mr Marshall rides for you, and he never speaks to a lady if he can help it, so you must allow me to wish Sir Harry to win,” Polly said, as she shook hands with him.

“Of course you may wish who you like to win; and what’s more, you will have what you wish for, for Lone Star won’t have a chance against Induna,” he said, as he left the house.

Polly watched him go through the garden, and listened to the tread of his feet as he walked away along the road. His very walk seemed to tell how angry and hurt he was. For a minute or two she felt a little guilty and sorry. After all she liked him a good deal. Though he was heavy and perhaps a little stupid, and at times by no means sweet-tempered, he was a good honest fellow and perfectly devoted to her. To tell the truth she had been upset by the attentions of her new admirer, Sir Harry. She was not more silly than most girls of her age, but she could not help thinking that the element of romance which was wanting in Joe Warton was present in the other. When she looked at Sir Harry’s good-looking face she told herself that he could care a good deal more for a woman than Joe could. Then he had a title and two or three places in England, and if she married him she would live in London and be in society, instead of living on the Diamond Fields, and that counted for a good deal with her, as it naturally would with a high-spirited girl who had plenty of ambition and wish to see the world. She knew that colonial girls had married Englishmen of family and gone home and held their own there, and she did not see why she could not do it.

Warton went round to his friend Marshall’s house, and found him turning in.

When he told the latter what he had done about Lone Star, and what he had heard about Induna being entered by Mr Lazarus, or Lascelles, as that gentleman had taken to call himself since he had made money on the Diamond Fields, he got very little sympathy.

“You must have been a fool to have backed the mare before you knew the entries. Believed Lazarus would not enter Induna because he said he was not going to, why he would sell his brother to please his friend Sir Harry; besides, he is not above a robbery on his own account. And as for its not paying them to enter the horse, and to have to buy it in, why they can back it for a good bit. Probably Howlett was doing it for them when he laid you those bets,” said Marshall.

“Do you think we have any chance? I should like to beat that fellow Ferriard.”

“Chance! devil a bit; no race is a certainty till the jockey is weighed in, and it’s all right. But this goes pretty near one.”

Warton went off greatly irritated with himself, and very much cut up and pained about Polly Short’s treatment of him. When he got back to his house he sat for some time in a chair outside his house, smoking and thinking over the unpleasant events of the evening. He had half gone to sleep when he was woke up by hearing the voices of two men, who were passing along the road on the side of the reed fence round his garden.

“Waste my time, do you say? don’t see it—why we haven’t done badly to-night, or this week either; and one can’t be always at business. What’s life without sentiment, my dear Bill?”

“All right, we ain’t done so bad to-night, only it’s a bit rilin’ when one sees a chance of getting up a bit of Poker or Loo to find that you’re hanging after that girl and out of the way.”

The first speaker spoke in the tones of an educated man and a gentleman. The second voice was a loud, gruff one, and seemed to belong to some one in a lower grade of society.

Joe Warton somehow thought he knew both voices, so he got up and looked over the fence. He found that the men had parted company; one had turned down a road and was out of sight; the other he could see. He was a heavily built man over six feet high, and Warton recognised him as a man called McNeil, who had not been long in Kimberley. He was rather a rough sort of fellow, who had knocked about the world a good deal. He professed to have come out to look at the mines, and report on them for a syndicate of capitalists at home. He was a good deal at the club, though some members thought him rather a doubtful character. The queer thing was, that Joe could not help suspecting that he had recognised in the other voice that of Ferriard. He remembered that Ferriard, though he was friendly enough to most men, had been rather standoffish to McNeil, and professed some surprise at meeting a man like him in a club, though he had afterwards played cards with him on several occasions, as they both seemed to have a keen taste for play. Yet if Warton’s suspicions were right, the two men seemed to be on the most confidential footing. After all he was not sure. He had no reason to suspect that Ferriard was not perfectlybonâ fideand straight, and because he disliked the man and was jealous of him, he ought to be all the more careful not to spread injurious reports about him. It was no business of his, and he would not mix himself up in it, he thought, as he undressed and went to bed.

When the day of the races came, Joe Warton’s chances of winning the Ladies’ Purse did not look any more hopeful than they were when the entries were published; nor had he managed to hedge any of the money he had put on Lone Star.

The public considered that it was a certainty for Induna, and it was generally thought that Mr Lascelles had been somewhat greedy and unsportsmanlike in entering his horse for the minor event, instead of trying to win one of the big ones. However, Mr Lascelles had joined his forces with some other owners, and had settled to take a share in the stakes they might win, instead of opposing them with Induna, one of the fastest horses ever bred in the colony, and one which several good judges thought might at the weights have a chance of beating the imported horses in the two principal handicaps. Men grumbled and said that the races were being made a cut and dried affair of, but Mr Lascelles did not care, so long as he was backed up by his friend Ferriard, about whom he swaggered and boasted more and more every day. He liked to think that Ferriard was going to ride for him. The race would be reported in the home papers, and there would be a crop of paragraphs about it, and the world in general would learn that Sir Harry Ferriard had sported his, Mr Lascelles, colours.

If Joe Warton’s chances of winning the race looked hopeless, his chances of winning what he cared a great deal more about, namely Polly Short’s affections, seemed to be almost as small. Their quarrel had grown more serious during the last few days. The Kimberley Race Ball had taken place, and Joe had attended it. He had not asked Polly to dance with him, and though he was an awkward dancer enough, generally managing to get her more or less torn and in trouble, she was none the less inclined to be angry with him for taking so little notice of her. At the same time Ferriard’s attentions had been very marked, and people were canvassing her chances of becoming Lady Ferriard. A good many of her friends laughed at the idea of his being such a fool as to bring home a bride from the Diamond Fields, but they did not know as much as Polly did, as she sat on the grand stand watching the horses entered for the Ladies’ Purse. The day before Ferriard had asked her to marry him, but his proposal had been a somewhat strange one. He had just received a cablegram he said, which made it necessary for him to put off his trip up country and start for England almost at once, and he wanted her to marry him in a week’s time and go home with him. Now that she had to make up her mind she felt half afraid. It had come so suddenly. Though she felt certain that Ferriard was in love with her, she felt somehow that she was doubtful whether she did not like her old lover best.

As she watched old Lone Star being saddled, and saw Joe Warton looking glum and out of spirits, she experienced a feeling of something like remorse. After all old friends were surest, she thought.

Lone Star had not many supporters. The old mare had won a good many races on the Diamond Fields, and his owner was one of the most popular men there. Little Lazarus might just as well have run Induna in one of the other races, and left the Ladies’ Purse for Lone Star, and one or two others, who would have had a fair chance. But there is no sentiment about betting, and the bookmakers’ cry of “Odds bar one, eight to one bar one, ten to one bar one!” met with very few responses. One or two men took the odds to a few sovereigns on the off-chance. People on the Diamond Fields are as a rule great believers in the off-chance. Still Joe Warton himself said he did not think he could win, and he advised his friends to leave it alone.

“Beg your pardon, sir, but will you let me have a look through your race-glasses for a second?” said a grey-haired, elderly-looking man, whom Joe never remembered having seen before, and who had just bustled into the grand stand, just as the horses were going down to the starting-post. “That black is the horse Sir Harry Ferriard rides, isn’t it? blue and yellow cap? Thank you, sir, I’ve seen what I want,” he added, with rather a satisfied air, as he gave the glasses back again to Warton.

“That’s the horse which will win,” Joe said, as he took the glasses.

“So they all seem to think, but maybe it isn’t one of Sir Harry’s lucky days,” the grey-haired man answered, as he bustled away, and Warton saw him in a second or two afterwards speaking rather earnestly to an inspector of police, who was in the ring. Whatever the grey-haired man had to say, seemed to surprise the latter a good deal.

“All right, in the weighing-room after the race. It will be done neatly and quietly, and no fuss; and a very pretty little bit of business it will be,” the grey-haired man said, as he bustled away, and he seemed to leave the inspector with something to do, for the latter at once went and spoke to one of the mounted men.

Joe Warton was Wondering who the grey-haired man was, when he noticed that after he had spoken to the inspector he passed closed to McNeil, the man whom he had recognised the night before outside his garden. The latter seemed also, so Warton thought, to be a good deal interested in the grey-haired man. In fact, he would have wagered, from the expression of his face, that he recognised the stranger.

However, Joe Warton did not bother himself any more about them, for just then there was a cry of “They’re off!” He was not long in suspense. “Induna wins!” was shouted out before the horses had got a furlong.

“Lone Star is coming up—No, it’s no good, she can’t catch Induna,” Warton said, as he put his glasses back in their case, for the race was practically over.

Polly Short looked at the race and felt that she was sorry, and that she would give a good deal to see old Lone Star win and that Joe should have the purse she had worked, though she supposed he would not care much for it now.

It was about as tame a race as could be seen, but as the winner passed the post, followed by Lone Star, a somewhat startling incident occurred. The grey-haired man who had borrowed Warton’s glass, had not gone up to the stand; McNeil also had stopped below and stood just behind him. Suddenly he sprang forward, seized the grey-haired man under his two arms and lifted him clean up into the air, at the same time shouting in a voice that could be heard all over the course,—

“Jim! Slim Jim! ride like hell! look here! Old Sharp has come out after you!”

“Hullo! what’s the matter with Sir Harry? he don’t seem to be able to stop the horse. Why, he’s going round twice—no he ain’t! Where the deuce is he going?” said Mr Lascelles, as he saw his horse shoot out from a canter into a gallop, and dash past the paddock at a racing pace. “Well, that’s a rum way to finish a race! I suppose it’s what they do at the club meeting where he rides at home. But I don’t see the sense of it.”

Mr Lascelles’ astonishment increased considerably as he saw a mounted policeman set off in hot pursuit of the winner.

“He’s gone mad! He can’t stop the horse! He’s got a sunstroke! He don’t know where the winning-post is!” were the opinions shouted out by the lookers-on.

“What price against the peeler?” called out some one in the ring. To which there was an answering yell of “Any odds!”

“He knows where he’s going to finish—it’s Stella Land he is making for, and my opinion is he will get there, for none of our men have anything that will catch him,” the Kimberley inspector said, and he looked at the grey-haired man with grim smile.

“Where is that man who interfered with me? Ah, it’s you, is it?” the latter said as he saw McNeil, who was straining his eyes at the race, not on the card, which was now taking place; “so you knew me, did you? I fancy I know you.”

“Know you, old man! I’d have known yer made into soup. Glad you remember me, for you’ve no old accounts against me,” the big man answered cheerily enough.

In the mean time George Marshall, the rider of Lone Star, had gone to the weighing-room.

“I’ll weigh in at once, I think; and I fancy old Lone Star has won this race after all, for Sir Harry Ferriard won’t pass the scales unless he loses the race he is riding now, and it’s long odds on him for that,” he said to the stewards who were superintending there.

The rider of Induna, Sir Harry Ferriard,aliasSlim Jim,aliasCaptain Barton,alias et cetera, never did come back to weigh in. He never came back to Kimberley at all.

Mr Lascelles never saw his aristocratic acquaintance or his horse Induna again. The former turned out to be a well-known criminal, who was wanted by the London police for a heavy Bill forgery case. Inspector Sharp of Scotland Yard had tracked him out to the Diamond Fields, and just arrived by the coach in time to get up to the racecourse and see him go down to the start on Induna.

The inspector does not often speak about that trip to South Africa, which he hoped would have been such a successful episode in his professional career. He has a mean opinion of a country where a fast horse enables a fugitive to get away from the police.

Joe Warton won the bets he was in such a hurry to make, and he spent the money in furnishing a house for Pretty Polly Short, who became Mrs Warton after all. She told him that before the sensational end of that queer race she had determined to give up the idea of becoming Lady Ferriard, on the chance of making it up with him again, and he believed her.

Story 12.A Compact.It was at the ‘George Hotel’ at Portsmouth (said Gordon, as we paced the deck of the ‘Trojan’ on our voyage home) that I spent my last evening in England with my brother. The next day I was to see him off for Cape Coast Castle, where he was going to serve with his regiment in the Ashantee war.To-day I can remember the dingy old smoking-room in which we sat till late at night, talking over the home and school days which were over, and our lives, which having always run together, seemed then to be branching far apart. We had no other relations alive; our father had died that year. The old castle in Sutherland, in which we had been born, had been sold to a rich London stock-broker, and our old life seemed to have come to an end. My brother, he was the elder, had chosen the army for his profession. He would have little but his pay to live upon, but it seemed to him to be the proper career for one of his race. I had determined to make money; it had been my dream that I would make my fortune in some distant part of the world where fortunes were to be made easily, though I did not quite know how. I was to come back to Scotland and settle down there, and we Gordons were to take our own place again. A few days after my brother sailed I was to start for South America, the country I had at last determined to be the land where that fortune would be soonest made. My brother had listened to all my schemes; and then we had talked about the campaign for which he was going to start. I think we both thought a good deal of the terrible climate he was going to face, and we became grave as the idea came into our minds that the next day’s parting was likely to be a long one. There was a story in our family that both of us must have been thinking of, for while it was in my mind my brother Donald suddenly spoke about it. The story was of a compact made between our grandfather and his brother. They were both soldiers, and their regiments were on service, one in Spain and the other in America. The agreement was that if one of them were killed, he would, if he were allowed to do so, appear to the other. Our uncle was killed in America, and it was always believed most religiously in our family that he was allowed to perform his promise, and that on the day he was killed my grandfather, who was in Spain, saw him and knew of his death. It was of this story, as we grew more thoughtful, on that last evening we were to spend together, my brother reminded me. “Let us make the same promise; the one who lives will be the last of our name and race, and perhaps it would be as well for him to know it at once,” he said to me. We had both become grave and earnest enough, and as we grasped each other’s hands and made that promise I think we felt it was not one lightly made. The next morning I saw him off. He said no more about our promise, yet as he stood on the deck of the troopship and I on the dockyard, I think we both thought of it.Neither King Koffee or the more dire potentate King Fever hurt my brother, and he came home well and in good spirits, and got on in the service, and of what fighting there was managed to see plenty.I am sorry to say that, unlike him, I did not fulfil the career I had mapped out for myself. I went to South America and did not succeed; and then tried one country after another, until one day, some nine years after I left England, I found myself in South Africa, finishing a long tramp from the gold-fields to the Diamond Fields. So far that fortune which I had gone out to seek was as far away in the future as ever. I had ceased even to hope for it. I had been a proverbial rolling stone and had gathered no moss. I had tried my luck in Canada, Australia, and South Africa, and had found each country worse than the one I had been in before.My experiences were not very interesting, and they would only make a tale which has already been told many a time before. I had begun to laugh grimly at my old hopes of making a fortune and buying back some of the family property. And yet my ideas had not been so absurd either; I had seen men whose chances did not seem to be much better than mine succeed and make something like the fortune I had dreamt of. Still I laughed when I contrasted my life with what I had expected it would have been. Certainly there had been plenty of incident in it; but it was a better life to talk about than to live—a life full of long dreary days of rough uncongenial society, and I am sorry to say, of coarse, brutalising dissipation and of degrading poverty brought about thereby. I failed at first from bad luck, and afterwards from my own fault. After one or two failures I came to South Africa and went up to the Diamond Fields. Kimberley, when I came there, seemed to be the city of the prodigal son. He was there devouring his substance and getting the worst of its kind for it, and feeding the swine, or rather, minding a bar, which is a good colonial equivalent, and only too ready to eat of the husk he served out. I had little substance to devour, and when I had used it up was not even as lucky as the prodigal, for I got nothing to do at all. From there I went up to the gold-fields in the Transvaal, and two years of varied luck in digging ended in my being on my way tramping back. I had not done much towards making my fortune, I had not a penny in my pocket, my boots were worn out, and I had not had a meal for twelve hours, and I was very doubtful as to how or where I should get the next one. I was doing my last day’s tramp. Far away across the veldt I could see the mounds of earth that had been taken out of the Kimberley mine, and as slowly and painfully I dragged across that weary flat they seemed to grow longer every step I took.It was with little feelings of hope I saw the distant view of that most hideous of towns, Kimberley. When I left the gold-fields I had thought that I could hardly be worse off than I had been there, and that I would get some work at the diamond mines. But, weary with my long journey, and weak from hunger and dysentery that had come over me, I had lost all strength, and thought that the best I could hope for would be that I should be allowed to crawl into the hospital at Kimberley and die there. Every step I took pained me, for my feet were sore and swollen. I remember I had been thinking a good deal about my brother and contrasting his career with mine. Already he was known as one of the most promising young officers in the army. I had not heard from him for years, for I had left off writing, and he did not know where to write to me. But I had seen by the papers that he had gained the Victoria Cross in Afghanistan. I thought of him and I thought of myself, and cursed my luck then, for I was too weak and out of spirits to fool myself; I cursed my own folly, which I knew had been the cause of my having come down so low. Slowly and hopelessly I stumbled along through the sand. “When should I get to Kimberley, what should I do when I got there?” I kept asking myself, and I felt too dull and tired out to answer the question. I had very few friends there, and my appearance, ragged, almost barefooted and obviously penniless, would not tell in my favour. “What was the good of walking any faster? I might as well sleep there on the veldt as go on,” I said to myself; and then stumbling over a stone, I half fell, half threw myself down beside the road, and lay there exhausted, thoughtless, and almost insensible. I was roused by some one lifting me up and pouring brandy down my throat.“Played out, eh? well, take a good nip of this, it will pull you together if anything will, it’s Eckshaw’s Number One, the best brandy that comes to this cursed country. Where have you come from, eh?” The voice I somehow seemed to remember, and as the brandy revived me I took a look at the Good Samaritan who had come to my assistance. I knew him; the pleasant voice belonged to Jim Dormer, and it was his handsome reckless face I saw looking down at me.“I have come from the gold-fields and have had a hardish time of it,” I said in answer to his question.“Well, I don’t know that I’d have done myself up like that to come to this wretched hole Kimberley; but you’d better get into my cart—I’ll give you a lift in anyhow,” he said. Of course I was glad enough to accept his offer and to get into his cart, which was drawn up close to where we were, his Kaffir boy holding the reins.“Let’s see, ain’t you Mr Gordon, who used to have claims at old De Beer’s? Thought I knew you. Do you remember that day on the racecourse when Cockney Bill and his pals tried the system of going for the banker at faro and jumping his satchel? That system would have come off if it hadn’t been for your taking a hand in the game.” I remembered the incident he alluded to, which took place one evening after the races. Some roughs had made an attack upon him and his partner, who were keeping a faro table, and I, who had been losing my money to him, came to his assistance. “I haven’t forgotten it and shan’t in a hurry. ‘That’s the sort of chap I’d like to have with me in anything that wanted good grit,’ I said to myself when I saw you in that row,” he said.“Look here, Mr Gordon, where are you going to put up when you get to Kimberley?” he added, after thinking for some time. “If you like to come to my place I can look after you and give you as good a room as you will get at any of the hotels, and you’ll be made quiet and comfortable.” It was a good-natured offer, and all the more good-natured from the way he put it; but I hesitated before I accepted it.“Ah, you think that stopping with Jim Dormer won’t sound over well, and I don’t say you’re not right; but times are bad in the camp and there isn’t much chance of your getting a billet all at once, so you might stop at my place till you get over your tramp down; but you won’t hurt my feelings by refusing, I ain’t one of the respectable crowd and don’t want to be.”He had guessed my thoughts. He was a pleasant, well-mannered fellow enough, but he had acquired rather a doubtful character, and I am afraid to a certain extent deserved it. It would be difficult for any one who wished to do so in a friendly spirit to say how he lived and had lived for the last ten years. He himself would probably admit that he was a professional gambler. His enemies would declare that in the matter of buying stolen diamonds he was not altogether without reproach. This charge, however, was not true, for he preferred winning money from the buyers of stolen diamonds to indulging in such a risky trade on his own account. He never for one moment was able to see that he was one whit worse than the people who belonged to what he called the respectable crowd.He won money from some of the biggest thieves in the camp, so he was called a sharper and an associate of bad characters, while your respectable men got hold of honest men’s money with their bubble companies. “He wished he got as much the best of it at a deal of faro as honest Mr Bowker, the member of the Legislative Assembly, did when he started the Boschfontein Mining Company. He was too straight to be respectable, that’s where he went wrong,” he would say to me when I got to know him better; and I believe he thought it.“Thanks, you’re a good fellow, but I don’t like to sponge on you; I am dead broke,” I said in answer to his invitation.“Dead broke be blowed! No man’s dead broke till his neck’s broke; and as for sponging on me, one never loses anything by doing a good turn to one of your sort who has good grit. You’re looking pretty bad though—dysentery do you say? Well, you’d better watch it; come up to my place and I’ll put you straight,” he said.It was not, perhaps, a very wise thing to do, but beggars can’t be choosers, and I was very little more than a beggar, besides I liked Jim Dormer’s cheery, free-and-easy manner. It was pleasant to meet a man who seemed to think something of one although one was unsuccessful and dead broke. So I accepted his offer, and leaned back in the cart, relieved to think that I should have a place to rest in after my long weary journey.Jim Dormer was on his way back from a visit to a roadside canteen, where a man he was interested in was training for a foot-race. “I am glad I met you; I like a man who has got grit; maybe it will be a lucky meeting for the pair of us,” he said somewhat enigmatically. I did not take much thought about what his motives might be, I was too tired. “Take a man as you find him; he has been a good friend to me anyhow,” I thought as I drove through the well-known street. The town looked dull and depressed; there was a marked change, one could see that bad times were felt more than they were when I left some months before. Bars, stores, and billiard-rooms that used to be doing a roaring business were empty. Several stores were to let; there was not as much traffic in the streets, while I fancied there was something in the listless gait of the men one saw lounging about which expressed bad times. Glad enough was I when we pulled up at a neat iron house where Jim lived, and where that great luxury, as it seemed to me then, a bed, was to be found provided for me after I had attempted a meal.A fortnight afterwards found me still staying with Jim. The morning after I had arrived at his house I had found myself too ill to get up; and nothing could have been kinder than he was to me, nursing me very carefully and seeing that I had everything that I wanted. When I had become well enough to go out and look for work he did not show much sympathy with my endeavour to find something to do. He had, I found out, a deep-rooted conviction that any attempts to get on in life by what people called honest labour was a vanity and a delusion. To make a pile and clear out of the country ought to be the aim and object of every one, and it was absurd being too particular as to how that pile was to be made, was the doctrine he was always preaching. Of all the more generally accepted modes of making a fortune he was most sceptical. Digging was a losing game, he considered. Even canteen keeping was hardly good enough. “What one wanted,” he would say with much candour, “was to go in for one good swindle and then clear off.”“You bet what you and I want to do is to get hold of a few thousands, and then say good-bye to the country. Don’t tell me we can’t do it, there is lots of money in the camp, though times may be so bad,” he said to me one evening as I was sitting in the verandah after a tiring day spent walking round the mines looking for work. “I was thinking of something in the New Mine line; there is a good deal to be done at that, but I hardly care to go in for the game; it’s too much one of your respectable man’s swindles for me, taking some poor devil’s last sov or two, who thinks the new rush is going to turn up trumps: it’s always your poor devils who are landed by that sort of swindle, now I only want to catch the big fish.” I made some remark in answer to this, more or less commending him for indulging in his conscientious scruples. I am afraid in my then frame of mind Jim Dormer’s peculiar code of morality was very taking. I began to agree with him that every one was more or less of a swindler, and that the more prosperous men were the adroiter scoundrels. Tramping about all day looking in vain for work put one in a suitable frame of mind for listening to my friend’s notions of things in general and of the Diamond Field public in particular.“Yes, we must get hold of some money somehow. See there, look at that cart,” he said, pointing to the mail-cart that was being driven along the road past the house, “there is not less than thirty thousand pounds’ worth of diamonds going across the veldt to-night, for that is a good bit less than the average amount they send home every week! Thirty thousand pounds, my boy! that would be a good haul, eh?” I watched the cart being driven along towards the open veldt, and I thought of how it was going to travel across miles of desert veldt with only one policeman upon it to guard its precious contents. So far as I knew, that mail, which started on Thursday with the week’s finds to catch the home steamer, had never been robbed. My friend did not say anything more about the cart, though I noticed he watched it till it was out of sight, and then he smoked in silence for some time. Then he returned to the subject, and made some remark about how strange it was that the mail had never stuck up; and we began to discuss how easily it could be done. “Nobody would lose one penny except the insurance companies and banks, for the diamonds are insured for more than they will sell for; yes, it’s just the thing sticking out; sooner or later it will be done, and then they will put on a stronger guard,” he said, looking at me rather carefully as he spoke, as if he wished to see how I took what he was saying. My evil genius led me to grumble out some sort of agreement with what he said.“Believe me, I’d like to collar that pool, or take a half or a third share of it,” he answered, “then I’d leave this cursed country. And it ain’t so tough a job neither. One only has to wait with a string across the road to upset the horses, and as they go down jump on the cart, get the mail-bags, tie up the driver and the guard, and get back to camp, and the next morning at breakfast look as mild as milk while every one’s jawing about one’s work the night before. It would be a pretty little game to play, eh, my boy? Better than going round to those managers and asking for a job as an overseer and being treated like a nigger, and being told to clear off and be damned by ’em.”“But there’s the policeman; he is armed and would show fight, and I shouldn’t like to hurt a chap who was only doing his duty,” I answered.“Well, nor would I; but I never see that mail-cart pass without wondering who will take the pool; some one will, mind you,” he said, and then turned the conversation to some other subject.A week or so more passed and I got nothing to do. At one time I thought I ought not to go on staying with Dormer and living upon him, but he laughed away my scruples. “What did it matter? it wasn’t as if I was always going to have bad luck. Was I ashamed of staying with him?” he would remark when I talked of going away. It always ended in my staying on. I was generally seen with him, I used to get money on for him when he played billiards or shot pigeons or made any other match, and to do some other little things for him; in fact, I began to be identified as Jim Dormer’s pal.Very few visitors came to see us at the house. Dormer carried on his business down the town in billiard-rooms and canteens; he never asked me to help him at faro or roulette or any of the games he played, nor did he impart to me any of the tricks of his trade. Nothing could be kinder than his manner to me; but nevertheless I felt that I was bound to repay him for his kindness, and that I was under a great obligation to him. After some time he once or twice stayed at home of an evening and a man came in to see him. The visitor was not a pleasant-looking person. He had a shifty, half-ashamed expression, and as he sat clumsily playing cards with Dormer he looked as if he knew he ought not to be where he was.“Who’s that? Don’t like his looks, can’t look one in the face,” I asked Jim one night when he had left.“That! oh, he’s a most respectable man, a sergeant in the police. We are thinking of going in for a little spec together, and you ought to be in it too. That’s the chap who goes down with the diamond mail. Old Jacobus the driver is going to be made a little drunker than usual, the policeman is to make a desperate resistance, and to be overpowered by us two, and then the three of us divide the swag, do you see?”Though I had not been boarding very luxuriously for some time, I had been drinking heavily. There was always drink to be had at Dormer’s house and when I went about with him, and lately I had drunk to drown my anxiety. I don’t intend to ape the canting cry of the criminal who, when he’s convicted of jumping upon his wife, tells the judge that “it’s all the drink wot’s done it.” Drink of itself doesn’t often make a criminal of a man, but it often enough robs him of all that sense of prudence which men mistake for conscience. If my brain had been clear of alcohol I think I should have refused Dormer’s suggestion at once; as it was there was something in it that took my fancy. Instead of refusing, I began to question him as to how it could be done. His answer was that it would be easy enough. The mail-cart was to be stopped by a rope tied across the road; the guard and the driver were to be tied up—the latter would not be likely to make a very determined resistance, while the former would be our confederate. When we had secured the diamonds we had nothing to do but to get back to Kimberley. Our confederate would take care not to be able to identify us, and there would be, so Jim urged, very little risk of our getting into trouble or failing to secure the rich booty.“It’s our last chance of making a good pile in the country; every day I expect that some one else will try the trick, and then they will put on a strong guard. It’s the one good thing left in the country,” he said; and then he began to talk about the rich prize we should secure without any one except the banks and insurance people being one bit the worse.“I don’t know whom to go to if you won’t go in for this; there are plenty of men in the camp who would jump at the chance, but they ain’t the sort I’d like to trust, but you’re good grit and I’d trust you any day,” he said; “come, I know you will stick to a pal.” For a second or two I hesitated, and then I said I would go in for it, and we shook hands over the agreement.It was on a Monday that I had this conversation with him, and it was on the following Thursday that the cart was to be stopped. The next day the police sergeant came up to the house to finally arrange his plans. I didn’t like the man’s looks any better on that occasion. In his presence I began to feel ashamed of myself because I was going to become a thief. It seemed disgraceful to be mixed up in such a business with that shifty-looking scoundrel. Dormer’s society, on the other hand, made me reckless and in good spirits, while he took care that I had drink enough to prevent my thinking too much.The place we had chosen to make our attack upon the cart was about twenty miles from Kimberley, and the cart would pass there about ten o’clock in the evening. An hour before that time Jim Dormer and I were sitting behind some rocks near the road at that place where we had agreed to stop the cart. We had the rope ready to put across the road when it was time for the cart to pass, while we both had our revolvers, with which we intended to make a great display of a determined attack.“It’s no good being too soon with the rope, the cart won’t be before its time, and something else might pass,” Dormer said as he lit a match to look at his watch.“How long have we to wait?” I asked, for I began to feel rather nervous and to wish the time for action had come.“An hour or more before the cart is due here; take a drink,” he said, handing me a whiskey-flask. I half emptied the flask and lit a pipe, and listened to my companion, who, to cheer me up, I fancy, began to talk about the time we would have when we cleared out of the country with the nice little pile we would make by that evening’s work. Dormer’s conversation and whiskey had its intended effect, and I got back my careless, reckless spirits.It was not very pleasant work waiting, the night had clouded over an hour or so before, and the flashes of lightning seemed to be terribly near us, while soon after the first flash the storm broke and the rain came down in torrents, as it does on the South African veldt in a summer’s thunderstorm.“All the better for us, my lad, just the night for the job,” he said as we tried to huddle behind the boulders to get out of the rain. Dormer talked away about the delights of Paris and London and the time we would have at home, while we both took several more pulls at the whiskey-bottle; for all that the time went slowly, and we began to feel wretchedly uncomfortable.As we sat there waiting for the time to arrive for us to begin our work and to stretch the rope across the road which was to stop the cart, it certainly seemed that my fate was sealed, and that I was destined to become a successful scoundrel or a skulking jail-bird for the rest of my life. Looking back I cannot remember that I felt much shame or remorse. I was infected with Dormer’s ideas of things. What we were going to do would not hurt any individual very much; it seemed to me then that it was a much more harmless thing than the financial robberies which were carried out by men who were considered most respectable persons; and as for the danger of being found out, I didn’t see where it came in, I thought, as I took a drink from the bottle.“Easy with that bottle, old chap, or you will be hitting some one when you let off your revolver; keep yourself cool, and mind you go straight for old Jacob, and see that he don’t pull the crape off your face,” Dormer said to me. Then he walked some yards off to take a look at the spot in the road he had chosen for tying the rope across.As he left me a strange change seemed to come over me. The reckless devil-may-care spirits I had been in left me, and I felt a sense of awe as if I knew that something was going to happen. Then a feeling came over me that some one was present, and all at once the rocks in front of me seemed to fade away, and where they had been I saw an unearthly luminous mist, and through it I saw a figure dressed as an officer in a Highland regiment. I could see that his arms were thrown back, his sword was falling from his hand. There was a rent in the breast of his coat, and in his face was the look of death. I knew him; he was my brother Donald; he had grown from a lad into a man, and he was handsome and more soldierlike than when I had seen him last. I remembered our compact, and then I knew that my brother was dead. There was the proud look of one who had earned the respect of his fellow-men in his highbred face. For one instant our eyes seemed to meet, and then as I sprang forward calling to him by name the figure and the mist surrounding it seemed to fade away. “Heaven help me,” I thought, “I am the last of our race.” A flood of home memories, which for some time I had done my best to banish from my thoughts, came back to me. As I touched my face and felt the mask of crape I had on, I realised what I was going to do, and that I was about to become a common criminal.“What on earth are you shouting for? what’s the matter with you, man? we’d better be moving and fixing the rope,” I heard Dormer say as he came back to where I was. I did not answer, but stood irresolute for a second or two. I felt half-ashamed to give up the adventure I had engaged in, but after what I had seen I was determined not to engage in it.“Jim, I am going to cut it; I have had a warning not to go on with this—let’s give it up.”“Give it up by—” and Dormer gave vent to his surprise and disgust in very strong language. “Well, I did think you were good grit; but you can’t give it up now. What’s come over you all at once?” He was thoroughly disgusted with me; such faith in human nature as remained to him had evidently received a shock. “Well, I’d have never thought it of you, you whom I always believed in. Come, pull yourself together and do what you said you’d do; it’s too late to turn tail now.” And then looking into my face and seeing how agitated I was, he asked me what on earth had happened to me. I think, like many a gambler and adventurer of his type, Jim had a strong vein of superstition in his nature. When I told him something of what I had seen he was somewhat impressed by it, and on my again expressing my determination to turn back and have no more to do with it he did not attempt to persuade me. Nor did he think of doing the thing by himself. He growled out a few sentences of disgust, and sulkily walked after me as I turned and made the best of my way towards Kimberley. We kept some way from the road; I hardly know why I did this, but I think it was because I did not wish to pass too close to the post-cart. After about half-an-hour we saw the post-cart driven along, and then Jim Dormer’s feelings became too much for him again, and he burst out into a string of oaths and reproaches. I must say I quite saw how contemptible my conduct must seem to him, and to a certain extent I sympathised with him. Suddenly he came to a stop and clutched my arm, motioning me to dodge behind some bushes. I did so, and in a few seconds three horsemen rode almost by where we were.“We are well out of that little trap. Did you see who they were? I will swear to two of them being Lamb and Stedman, the detectives. By George! but I will go back from all I’ve been saying; that was a straight tip you got wherever it came from to give up this job,” Dormer whispered to me when they had ridden past. “That hound of a policeman has rounded on us and given information,” he added. It turned out afterwards that this idea of his was right. It was pretty clear that we had just been in time in leaving the place where we had agreed to wait for the cart. Our plot had been betrayed and a very warm reception had been arranged for us. Even as it was we felt that there was some chance of our being arrested, and we were both glad enough when we were got back to Kimberley and were safe in our beds.Tired though I was, I slept very little, but I lay awake and thought of my brother, whom I was convinced was no more, and of the old home days. I thought more seriously of my degraded life and made more good resolutions than I had done for many a long day. I think I kept them fairly well, though I had a hard time of it for some time to come. At last I got some work to do for a company on the Transvaal gold-fields, and since then I have made a living, though I don’t know that I am likely to make the fortune I used to dream of. Dormer and I parted good friends. “Your second-sight seems as if it had been a warning to you to keep straight, and I’d do it if I were you; as for me, well, it’s different,” he said as we shook hands. He left South Africa shortly after this, and I don’t know what happened to him.The Kimberley newspaper a day or two after had a telegram in it telling of the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, and when I saw full particulars of it some weeks after I learnt that my brother had been shot when leading his company in that engagement.

It was at the ‘George Hotel’ at Portsmouth (said Gordon, as we paced the deck of the ‘Trojan’ on our voyage home) that I spent my last evening in England with my brother. The next day I was to see him off for Cape Coast Castle, where he was going to serve with his regiment in the Ashantee war.

To-day I can remember the dingy old smoking-room in which we sat till late at night, talking over the home and school days which were over, and our lives, which having always run together, seemed then to be branching far apart. We had no other relations alive; our father had died that year. The old castle in Sutherland, in which we had been born, had been sold to a rich London stock-broker, and our old life seemed to have come to an end. My brother, he was the elder, had chosen the army for his profession. He would have little but his pay to live upon, but it seemed to him to be the proper career for one of his race. I had determined to make money; it had been my dream that I would make my fortune in some distant part of the world where fortunes were to be made easily, though I did not quite know how. I was to come back to Scotland and settle down there, and we Gordons were to take our own place again. A few days after my brother sailed I was to start for South America, the country I had at last determined to be the land where that fortune would be soonest made. My brother had listened to all my schemes; and then we had talked about the campaign for which he was going to start. I think we both thought a good deal of the terrible climate he was going to face, and we became grave as the idea came into our minds that the next day’s parting was likely to be a long one. There was a story in our family that both of us must have been thinking of, for while it was in my mind my brother Donald suddenly spoke about it. The story was of a compact made between our grandfather and his brother. They were both soldiers, and their regiments were on service, one in Spain and the other in America. The agreement was that if one of them were killed, he would, if he were allowed to do so, appear to the other. Our uncle was killed in America, and it was always believed most religiously in our family that he was allowed to perform his promise, and that on the day he was killed my grandfather, who was in Spain, saw him and knew of his death. It was of this story, as we grew more thoughtful, on that last evening we were to spend together, my brother reminded me. “Let us make the same promise; the one who lives will be the last of our name and race, and perhaps it would be as well for him to know it at once,” he said to me. We had both become grave and earnest enough, and as we grasped each other’s hands and made that promise I think we felt it was not one lightly made. The next morning I saw him off. He said no more about our promise, yet as he stood on the deck of the troopship and I on the dockyard, I think we both thought of it.

Neither King Koffee or the more dire potentate King Fever hurt my brother, and he came home well and in good spirits, and got on in the service, and of what fighting there was managed to see plenty.

I am sorry to say that, unlike him, I did not fulfil the career I had mapped out for myself. I went to South America and did not succeed; and then tried one country after another, until one day, some nine years after I left England, I found myself in South Africa, finishing a long tramp from the gold-fields to the Diamond Fields. So far that fortune which I had gone out to seek was as far away in the future as ever. I had ceased even to hope for it. I had been a proverbial rolling stone and had gathered no moss. I had tried my luck in Canada, Australia, and South Africa, and had found each country worse than the one I had been in before.

My experiences were not very interesting, and they would only make a tale which has already been told many a time before. I had begun to laugh grimly at my old hopes of making a fortune and buying back some of the family property. And yet my ideas had not been so absurd either; I had seen men whose chances did not seem to be much better than mine succeed and make something like the fortune I had dreamt of. Still I laughed when I contrasted my life with what I had expected it would have been. Certainly there had been plenty of incident in it; but it was a better life to talk about than to live—a life full of long dreary days of rough uncongenial society, and I am sorry to say, of coarse, brutalising dissipation and of degrading poverty brought about thereby. I failed at first from bad luck, and afterwards from my own fault. After one or two failures I came to South Africa and went up to the Diamond Fields. Kimberley, when I came there, seemed to be the city of the prodigal son. He was there devouring his substance and getting the worst of its kind for it, and feeding the swine, or rather, minding a bar, which is a good colonial equivalent, and only too ready to eat of the husk he served out. I had little substance to devour, and when I had used it up was not even as lucky as the prodigal, for I got nothing to do at all. From there I went up to the gold-fields in the Transvaal, and two years of varied luck in digging ended in my being on my way tramping back. I had not done much towards making my fortune, I had not a penny in my pocket, my boots were worn out, and I had not had a meal for twelve hours, and I was very doubtful as to how or where I should get the next one. I was doing my last day’s tramp. Far away across the veldt I could see the mounds of earth that had been taken out of the Kimberley mine, and as slowly and painfully I dragged across that weary flat they seemed to grow longer every step I took.

It was with little feelings of hope I saw the distant view of that most hideous of towns, Kimberley. When I left the gold-fields I had thought that I could hardly be worse off than I had been there, and that I would get some work at the diamond mines. But, weary with my long journey, and weak from hunger and dysentery that had come over me, I had lost all strength, and thought that the best I could hope for would be that I should be allowed to crawl into the hospital at Kimberley and die there. Every step I took pained me, for my feet were sore and swollen. I remember I had been thinking a good deal about my brother and contrasting his career with mine. Already he was known as one of the most promising young officers in the army. I had not heard from him for years, for I had left off writing, and he did not know where to write to me. But I had seen by the papers that he had gained the Victoria Cross in Afghanistan. I thought of him and I thought of myself, and cursed my luck then, for I was too weak and out of spirits to fool myself; I cursed my own folly, which I knew had been the cause of my having come down so low. Slowly and hopelessly I stumbled along through the sand. “When should I get to Kimberley, what should I do when I got there?” I kept asking myself, and I felt too dull and tired out to answer the question. I had very few friends there, and my appearance, ragged, almost barefooted and obviously penniless, would not tell in my favour. “What was the good of walking any faster? I might as well sleep there on the veldt as go on,” I said to myself; and then stumbling over a stone, I half fell, half threw myself down beside the road, and lay there exhausted, thoughtless, and almost insensible. I was roused by some one lifting me up and pouring brandy down my throat.

“Played out, eh? well, take a good nip of this, it will pull you together if anything will, it’s Eckshaw’s Number One, the best brandy that comes to this cursed country. Where have you come from, eh?” The voice I somehow seemed to remember, and as the brandy revived me I took a look at the Good Samaritan who had come to my assistance. I knew him; the pleasant voice belonged to Jim Dormer, and it was his handsome reckless face I saw looking down at me.

“I have come from the gold-fields and have had a hardish time of it,” I said in answer to his question.

“Well, I don’t know that I’d have done myself up like that to come to this wretched hole Kimberley; but you’d better get into my cart—I’ll give you a lift in anyhow,” he said. Of course I was glad enough to accept his offer and to get into his cart, which was drawn up close to where we were, his Kaffir boy holding the reins.

“Let’s see, ain’t you Mr Gordon, who used to have claims at old De Beer’s? Thought I knew you. Do you remember that day on the racecourse when Cockney Bill and his pals tried the system of going for the banker at faro and jumping his satchel? That system would have come off if it hadn’t been for your taking a hand in the game.” I remembered the incident he alluded to, which took place one evening after the races. Some roughs had made an attack upon him and his partner, who were keeping a faro table, and I, who had been losing my money to him, came to his assistance. “I haven’t forgotten it and shan’t in a hurry. ‘That’s the sort of chap I’d like to have with me in anything that wanted good grit,’ I said to myself when I saw you in that row,” he said.

“Look here, Mr Gordon, where are you going to put up when you get to Kimberley?” he added, after thinking for some time. “If you like to come to my place I can look after you and give you as good a room as you will get at any of the hotels, and you’ll be made quiet and comfortable.” It was a good-natured offer, and all the more good-natured from the way he put it; but I hesitated before I accepted it.

“Ah, you think that stopping with Jim Dormer won’t sound over well, and I don’t say you’re not right; but times are bad in the camp and there isn’t much chance of your getting a billet all at once, so you might stop at my place till you get over your tramp down; but you won’t hurt my feelings by refusing, I ain’t one of the respectable crowd and don’t want to be.”

He had guessed my thoughts. He was a pleasant, well-mannered fellow enough, but he had acquired rather a doubtful character, and I am afraid to a certain extent deserved it. It would be difficult for any one who wished to do so in a friendly spirit to say how he lived and had lived for the last ten years. He himself would probably admit that he was a professional gambler. His enemies would declare that in the matter of buying stolen diamonds he was not altogether without reproach. This charge, however, was not true, for he preferred winning money from the buyers of stolen diamonds to indulging in such a risky trade on his own account. He never for one moment was able to see that he was one whit worse than the people who belonged to what he called the respectable crowd.

He won money from some of the biggest thieves in the camp, so he was called a sharper and an associate of bad characters, while your respectable men got hold of honest men’s money with their bubble companies. “He wished he got as much the best of it at a deal of faro as honest Mr Bowker, the member of the Legislative Assembly, did when he started the Boschfontein Mining Company. He was too straight to be respectable, that’s where he went wrong,” he would say to me when I got to know him better; and I believe he thought it.

“Thanks, you’re a good fellow, but I don’t like to sponge on you; I am dead broke,” I said in answer to his invitation.

“Dead broke be blowed! No man’s dead broke till his neck’s broke; and as for sponging on me, one never loses anything by doing a good turn to one of your sort who has good grit. You’re looking pretty bad though—dysentery do you say? Well, you’d better watch it; come up to my place and I’ll put you straight,” he said.

It was not, perhaps, a very wise thing to do, but beggars can’t be choosers, and I was very little more than a beggar, besides I liked Jim Dormer’s cheery, free-and-easy manner. It was pleasant to meet a man who seemed to think something of one although one was unsuccessful and dead broke. So I accepted his offer, and leaned back in the cart, relieved to think that I should have a place to rest in after my long weary journey.

Jim Dormer was on his way back from a visit to a roadside canteen, where a man he was interested in was training for a foot-race. “I am glad I met you; I like a man who has got grit; maybe it will be a lucky meeting for the pair of us,” he said somewhat enigmatically. I did not take much thought about what his motives might be, I was too tired. “Take a man as you find him; he has been a good friend to me anyhow,” I thought as I drove through the well-known street. The town looked dull and depressed; there was a marked change, one could see that bad times were felt more than they were when I left some months before. Bars, stores, and billiard-rooms that used to be doing a roaring business were empty. Several stores were to let; there was not as much traffic in the streets, while I fancied there was something in the listless gait of the men one saw lounging about which expressed bad times. Glad enough was I when we pulled up at a neat iron house where Jim lived, and where that great luxury, as it seemed to me then, a bed, was to be found provided for me after I had attempted a meal.

A fortnight afterwards found me still staying with Jim. The morning after I had arrived at his house I had found myself too ill to get up; and nothing could have been kinder than he was to me, nursing me very carefully and seeing that I had everything that I wanted. When I had become well enough to go out and look for work he did not show much sympathy with my endeavour to find something to do. He had, I found out, a deep-rooted conviction that any attempts to get on in life by what people called honest labour was a vanity and a delusion. To make a pile and clear out of the country ought to be the aim and object of every one, and it was absurd being too particular as to how that pile was to be made, was the doctrine he was always preaching. Of all the more generally accepted modes of making a fortune he was most sceptical. Digging was a losing game, he considered. Even canteen keeping was hardly good enough. “What one wanted,” he would say with much candour, “was to go in for one good swindle and then clear off.”

“You bet what you and I want to do is to get hold of a few thousands, and then say good-bye to the country. Don’t tell me we can’t do it, there is lots of money in the camp, though times may be so bad,” he said to me one evening as I was sitting in the verandah after a tiring day spent walking round the mines looking for work. “I was thinking of something in the New Mine line; there is a good deal to be done at that, but I hardly care to go in for the game; it’s too much one of your respectable man’s swindles for me, taking some poor devil’s last sov or two, who thinks the new rush is going to turn up trumps: it’s always your poor devils who are landed by that sort of swindle, now I only want to catch the big fish.” I made some remark in answer to this, more or less commending him for indulging in his conscientious scruples. I am afraid in my then frame of mind Jim Dormer’s peculiar code of morality was very taking. I began to agree with him that every one was more or less of a swindler, and that the more prosperous men were the adroiter scoundrels. Tramping about all day looking in vain for work put one in a suitable frame of mind for listening to my friend’s notions of things in general and of the Diamond Field public in particular.

“Yes, we must get hold of some money somehow. See there, look at that cart,” he said, pointing to the mail-cart that was being driven along the road past the house, “there is not less than thirty thousand pounds’ worth of diamonds going across the veldt to-night, for that is a good bit less than the average amount they send home every week! Thirty thousand pounds, my boy! that would be a good haul, eh?” I watched the cart being driven along towards the open veldt, and I thought of how it was going to travel across miles of desert veldt with only one policeman upon it to guard its precious contents. So far as I knew, that mail, which started on Thursday with the week’s finds to catch the home steamer, had never been robbed. My friend did not say anything more about the cart, though I noticed he watched it till it was out of sight, and then he smoked in silence for some time. Then he returned to the subject, and made some remark about how strange it was that the mail had never stuck up; and we began to discuss how easily it could be done. “Nobody would lose one penny except the insurance companies and banks, for the diamonds are insured for more than they will sell for; yes, it’s just the thing sticking out; sooner or later it will be done, and then they will put on a stronger guard,” he said, looking at me rather carefully as he spoke, as if he wished to see how I took what he was saying. My evil genius led me to grumble out some sort of agreement with what he said.

“Believe me, I’d like to collar that pool, or take a half or a third share of it,” he answered, “then I’d leave this cursed country. And it ain’t so tough a job neither. One only has to wait with a string across the road to upset the horses, and as they go down jump on the cart, get the mail-bags, tie up the driver and the guard, and get back to camp, and the next morning at breakfast look as mild as milk while every one’s jawing about one’s work the night before. It would be a pretty little game to play, eh, my boy? Better than going round to those managers and asking for a job as an overseer and being treated like a nigger, and being told to clear off and be damned by ’em.”

“But there’s the policeman; he is armed and would show fight, and I shouldn’t like to hurt a chap who was only doing his duty,” I answered.

“Well, nor would I; but I never see that mail-cart pass without wondering who will take the pool; some one will, mind you,” he said, and then turned the conversation to some other subject.

A week or so more passed and I got nothing to do. At one time I thought I ought not to go on staying with Dormer and living upon him, but he laughed away my scruples. “What did it matter? it wasn’t as if I was always going to have bad luck. Was I ashamed of staying with him?” he would remark when I talked of going away. It always ended in my staying on. I was generally seen with him, I used to get money on for him when he played billiards or shot pigeons or made any other match, and to do some other little things for him; in fact, I began to be identified as Jim Dormer’s pal.

Very few visitors came to see us at the house. Dormer carried on his business down the town in billiard-rooms and canteens; he never asked me to help him at faro or roulette or any of the games he played, nor did he impart to me any of the tricks of his trade. Nothing could be kinder than his manner to me; but nevertheless I felt that I was bound to repay him for his kindness, and that I was under a great obligation to him. After some time he once or twice stayed at home of an evening and a man came in to see him. The visitor was not a pleasant-looking person. He had a shifty, half-ashamed expression, and as he sat clumsily playing cards with Dormer he looked as if he knew he ought not to be where he was.

“Who’s that? Don’t like his looks, can’t look one in the face,” I asked Jim one night when he had left.

“That! oh, he’s a most respectable man, a sergeant in the police. We are thinking of going in for a little spec together, and you ought to be in it too. That’s the chap who goes down with the diamond mail. Old Jacobus the driver is going to be made a little drunker than usual, the policeman is to make a desperate resistance, and to be overpowered by us two, and then the three of us divide the swag, do you see?”

Though I had not been boarding very luxuriously for some time, I had been drinking heavily. There was always drink to be had at Dormer’s house and when I went about with him, and lately I had drunk to drown my anxiety. I don’t intend to ape the canting cry of the criminal who, when he’s convicted of jumping upon his wife, tells the judge that “it’s all the drink wot’s done it.” Drink of itself doesn’t often make a criminal of a man, but it often enough robs him of all that sense of prudence which men mistake for conscience. If my brain had been clear of alcohol I think I should have refused Dormer’s suggestion at once; as it was there was something in it that took my fancy. Instead of refusing, I began to question him as to how it could be done. His answer was that it would be easy enough. The mail-cart was to be stopped by a rope tied across the road; the guard and the driver were to be tied up—the latter would not be likely to make a very determined resistance, while the former would be our confederate. When we had secured the diamonds we had nothing to do but to get back to Kimberley. Our confederate would take care not to be able to identify us, and there would be, so Jim urged, very little risk of our getting into trouble or failing to secure the rich booty.

“It’s our last chance of making a good pile in the country; every day I expect that some one else will try the trick, and then they will put on a strong guard. It’s the one good thing left in the country,” he said; and then he began to talk about the rich prize we should secure without any one except the banks and insurance people being one bit the worse.

“I don’t know whom to go to if you won’t go in for this; there are plenty of men in the camp who would jump at the chance, but they ain’t the sort I’d like to trust, but you’re good grit and I’d trust you any day,” he said; “come, I know you will stick to a pal.” For a second or two I hesitated, and then I said I would go in for it, and we shook hands over the agreement.

It was on a Monday that I had this conversation with him, and it was on the following Thursday that the cart was to be stopped. The next day the police sergeant came up to the house to finally arrange his plans. I didn’t like the man’s looks any better on that occasion. In his presence I began to feel ashamed of myself because I was going to become a thief. It seemed disgraceful to be mixed up in such a business with that shifty-looking scoundrel. Dormer’s society, on the other hand, made me reckless and in good spirits, while he took care that I had drink enough to prevent my thinking too much.

The place we had chosen to make our attack upon the cart was about twenty miles from Kimberley, and the cart would pass there about ten o’clock in the evening. An hour before that time Jim Dormer and I were sitting behind some rocks near the road at that place where we had agreed to stop the cart. We had the rope ready to put across the road when it was time for the cart to pass, while we both had our revolvers, with which we intended to make a great display of a determined attack.

“It’s no good being too soon with the rope, the cart won’t be before its time, and something else might pass,” Dormer said as he lit a match to look at his watch.

“How long have we to wait?” I asked, for I began to feel rather nervous and to wish the time for action had come.

“An hour or more before the cart is due here; take a drink,” he said, handing me a whiskey-flask. I half emptied the flask and lit a pipe, and listened to my companion, who, to cheer me up, I fancy, began to talk about the time we would have when we cleared out of the country with the nice little pile we would make by that evening’s work. Dormer’s conversation and whiskey had its intended effect, and I got back my careless, reckless spirits.

It was not very pleasant work waiting, the night had clouded over an hour or so before, and the flashes of lightning seemed to be terribly near us, while soon after the first flash the storm broke and the rain came down in torrents, as it does on the South African veldt in a summer’s thunderstorm.

“All the better for us, my lad, just the night for the job,” he said as we tried to huddle behind the boulders to get out of the rain. Dormer talked away about the delights of Paris and London and the time we would have at home, while we both took several more pulls at the whiskey-bottle; for all that the time went slowly, and we began to feel wretchedly uncomfortable.

As we sat there waiting for the time to arrive for us to begin our work and to stretch the rope across the road which was to stop the cart, it certainly seemed that my fate was sealed, and that I was destined to become a successful scoundrel or a skulking jail-bird for the rest of my life. Looking back I cannot remember that I felt much shame or remorse. I was infected with Dormer’s ideas of things. What we were going to do would not hurt any individual very much; it seemed to me then that it was a much more harmless thing than the financial robberies which were carried out by men who were considered most respectable persons; and as for the danger of being found out, I didn’t see where it came in, I thought, as I took a drink from the bottle.

“Easy with that bottle, old chap, or you will be hitting some one when you let off your revolver; keep yourself cool, and mind you go straight for old Jacob, and see that he don’t pull the crape off your face,” Dormer said to me. Then he walked some yards off to take a look at the spot in the road he had chosen for tying the rope across.

As he left me a strange change seemed to come over me. The reckless devil-may-care spirits I had been in left me, and I felt a sense of awe as if I knew that something was going to happen. Then a feeling came over me that some one was present, and all at once the rocks in front of me seemed to fade away, and where they had been I saw an unearthly luminous mist, and through it I saw a figure dressed as an officer in a Highland regiment. I could see that his arms were thrown back, his sword was falling from his hand. There was a rent in the breast of his coat, and in his face was the look of death. I knew him; he was my brother Donald; he had grown from a lad into a man, and he was handsome and more soldierlike than when I had seen him last. I remembered our compact, and then I knew that my brother was dead. There was the proud look of one who had earned the respect of his fellow-men in his highbred face. For one instant our eyes seemed to meet, and then as I sprang forward calling to him by name the figure and the mist surrounding it seemed to fade away. “Heaven help me,” I thought, “I am the last of our race.” A flood of home memories, which for some time I had done my best to banish from my thoughts, came back to me. As I touched my face and felt the mask of crape I had on, I realised what I was going to do, and that I was about to become a common criminal.

“What on earth are you shouting for? what’s the matter with you, man? we’d better be moving and fixing the rope,” I heard Dormer say as he came back to where I was. I did not answer, but stood irresolute for a second or two. I felt half-ashamed to give up the adventure I had engaged in, but after what I had seen I was determined not to engage in it.

“Jim, I am going to cut it; I have had a warning not to go on with this—let’s give it up.”

“Give it up by—” and Dormer gave vent to his surprise and disgust in very strong language. “Well, I did think you were good grit; but you can’t give it up now. What’s come over you all at once?” He was thoroughly disgusted with me; such faith in human nature as remained to him had evidently received a shock. “Well, I’d have never thought it of you, you whom I always believed in. Come, pull yourself together and do what you said you’d do; it’s too late to turn tail now.” And then looking into my face and seeing how agitated I was, he asked me what on earth had happened to me. I think, like many a gambler and adventurer of his type, Jim had a strong vein of superstition in his nature. When I told him something of what I had seen he was somewhat impressed by it, and on my again expressing my determination to turn back and have no more to do with it he did not attempt to persuade me. Nor did he think of doing the thing by himself. He growled out a few sentences of disgust, and sulkily walked after me as I turned and made the best of my way towards Kimberley. We kept some way from the road; I hardly know why I did this, but I think it was because I did not wish to pass too close to the post-cart. After about half-an-hour we saw the post-cart driven along, and then Jim Dormer’s feelings became too much for him again, and he burst out into a string of oaths and reproaches. I must say I quite saw how contemptible my conduct must seem to him, and to a certain extent I sympathised with him. Suddenly he came to a stop and clutched my arm, motioning me to dodge behind some bushes. I did so, and in a few seconds three horsemen rode almost by where we were.

“We are well out of that little trap. Did you see who they were? I will swear to two of them being Lamb and Stedman, the detectives. By George! but I will go back from all I’ve been saying; that was a straight tip you got wherever it came from to give up this job,” Dormer whispered to me when they had ridden past. “That hound of a policeman has rounded on us and given information,” he added. It turned out afterwards that this idea of his was right. It was pretty clear that we had just been in time in leaving the place where we had agreed to wait for the cart. Our plot had been betrayed and a very warm reception had been arranged for us. Even as it was we felt that there was some chance of our being arrested, and we were both glad enough when we were got back to Kimberley and were safe in our beds.

Tired though I was, I slept very little, but I lay awake and thought of my brother, whom I was convinced was no more, and of the old home days. I thought more seriously of my degraded life and made more good resolutions than I had done for many a long day. I think I kept them fairly well, though I had a hard time of it for some time to come. At last I got some work to do for a company on the Transvaal gold-fields, and since then I have made a living, though I don’t know that I am likely to make the fortune I used to dream of. Dormer and I parted good friends. “Your second-sight seems as if it had been a warning to you to keep straight, and I’d do it if I were you; as for me, well, it’s different,” he said as we shook hands. He left South Africa shortly after this, and I don’t know what happened to him.

The Kimberley newspaper a day or two after had a telegram in it telling of the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, and when I saw full particulars of it some weeks after I learnt that my brother had been shot when leading his company in that engagement.

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