Story 2.

Story 2.Kitty of “The Frozen Bar.”Some years ago there was at Kimberley a very popular house of entertainment, called ‘The Frozen Bar,’ which had been in existence since the early days of diamond-digging, and had become one of the institutions of the Fields. From a mere bar it had grown into a hotel—bedrooms having been put up in the compound behind it, and a dining-room opened for the use of its boarders. Still the old name—which had been a happy thought in the old days when ice was unknown and yearned for on the Fields—was retained. So far as it was possible for an iron house under a blazing South African sun to be kept cool, it justified its name. Ice, when the ice-machines had not broken down or the ice-manufacturers gone on the spree, was very plentiful there. Hot brandies and sodas were never served out. And it was always refreshing to see its proprietress, pretty little Kitty Clay, who was always cheery and bright, however trying the times or the weather might be, and would look fresh, clean, and cool even in the misery of a Diamond Field dust-storm.‘The Frozen Bar’ was used by men who as a rule did not care to frequent common canteens and rub shoulders with the people who were to be met with in such places. Bad characters fought rather shy of it. For instance, Jim Paliter, the gambler and sharper, who was always lurking about to look for some unwary one who would first shake the dice for drinks, and afterwards to while away the time throw for sovereigns, never made it his hunting-ground. His self-assurance was proof against a good deal, but Kitty’s quiet way of letting him know that his room was preferred to his company was too much for him. I.D.B.’s, as that section of the Kimberley public who live by buying stolen diamonds are called, did not care to use it, unless they were prosperous and in the higher walks of their trade. It was situated near the Kimberley mine and the diamond market, and all day long it did a roaring trade. The crowd who thronged its doors was representative of Kimberley, for it contained men of many different races and types. Men came there dressed in every description of costume, from moleskins, flannel shirts, and slouch hats, to suits of London-made clothes sent out from home by West End tailors. You would see the rugged, weather-worn faces of men who had been diggers all over the world wherever the earth had yielded gold or precious stones, and the dark, hungry-eyed, bird-of-prey-like faces of Jews who are drawn to the spot where men find precious stones as vultures are drawn to a corpse. It was in the afternoon, just after luncheon, that the place would be most crowded. Then Kitty would be in her element, taking money, though more often ‘good-fors,’ answering questions, chaffing, and laughing over the news of the day—the latest scandal or the best joke against some one—and making comments upon it, very often more humorous than polite. Poor, cheery, big-hearted little Kitty, the best woman in the world—so many a man said, and with some reason. Maybe she used to laugh merrily enough at stories she ought not to have listened to, and the remarks she made were perhaps not over womanly, still no one could deny that she had a tender woman’s heart. In the early days of the Fields, when hardships were greater, and the ups and downs of life were more marked, there were many who had good reason to be grateful to her. She had been a friend in need to many a man who from illness or accident had been pushed down and was likely to be trampled upon in the fierce struggle for existence in the first days of the rush to the new diggings. There were generally boarding at the ‘Frozen Bar’ one or two men for whose custom the other licensed victuallers did not yearn—men whom Kitty had known in their brighter days, and whom she would not go back upon because they were down on their luck and out of a billet.She was nearer thirty than twenty, and her life had been rather a hard one, though it had left very few traces on her bright little face, and her troubles had not made her laugh less cheery or her smile less kind, though perhaps they had caused that dash of cynicism which sometimes showed itself in her talk. She had begun life as a ballet-girl in a London theatre, had travelled half over the world with a theatrical company, and at Cape Town had married a Diamond field man who had taken her up to Kimberley.Her husband, whom she had never cared for much, turned out anything but a satisfactory one. But her married life did not last very long. Less than a year after her marriage, a middle-aged female arrived on the Diamond Fields and laid claim to her husband, and as she was a person of great determination, and was able to prove that she had married him some years before in London, she carried him off in triumph, leaving Kitty to find out whether or no a bad husband was better than none at all. Kitty would probably have answered this in the negative, for she was very well able to take care of herself. She started ‘The Frozen Bar’ and prospered there, and if she had only been good at saving money would have become quite a rich woman.One evening there were several men lounging in the bar listening to Kitty’s chaff and stories, when some one started a subject which made her look a good deal graver than usual. “So your friend Jack is back again in the camp,” one of her customers had said.“Jack—which Jack? there are a good many Jacks on the Fields, you know,” Kitty answered; but with a note of trouble in her voice which suggested that the other’s words had conveyed some news to her that she was sorry to hear.“Jack Douglas, I mean. He has let his prospecting job down the river slide, and he is back in the camp again, and he has been back for a week, and been on the spree all the time.”“How that chap has gone to the bad! I remember him when he was quite a decent fellow, and to-day I saw him with some of the biggest thieves in the camp—Jim Paliter, Ike Sloeman, and all that gang.”“Mark my words, we shall see Jack Douglas run in for I.D.B. some of these fine days; he is going that way pretty quick,” another man said; and there was something in his tone and expression as he spoke which irritated Kitty into showing a good deal of feeling.“Why do you talk about my friend Jack? I don’t have friends, only customers, and when they have spent their money and gone to grief there is an end of them so far as I am concerned. But he used to be your friend Jack once upon a time; why don’t some of you fellows try and give him a help instead of pointing at him, and saying he has gone to the bad?” she said.“Oh, he is no good; he has gone too far to be helped,”—“It’s all his own fault,”—“He will never do any good here, he ought to clear out,” were the answers to Kitty’s suggestion. The men, though they talked slightingly enough of Jack, looked, one or two of them, half ashamed, for Jack had been a popular man on the Fields in the old days when he owned claims and was not badly off, and the men who discussed his fate so coolly had once been glad enough to be his friends.“Clear out indeed! Where to? To the devil for all you care. That is so like you men; that is how you stick to a friend.”“Listen to Kitty; why, she seems to be quite sweet on Jack Douglas. Look out, Kitty, he would not be a good partner in the business; why, he’d precious soon drink up the profits,” said a little Jew who had been listening to the conversation though no one had been speaking to him.An angry flush came across Kitty’s face. For once, she could not think of a neat retort, and she answered, showing that she was hurt. “Look here, Mr Moses or Abrams, or whatever your name is, suppose you keep your advice till it’s asked for. I never spoke to you when I talked about people helping Jack; no one expects one of your sort to help a man, and Jack would not care to take any help from you.”“Don’t know about not wanting my help; he is glad enough to be helped by some very queer people,” said the little Jew as he walked out of the place, grumbling out something about never coming in again.“Douglas may be a fool, and he may have gone to the bad, but I hate to hear a little cad like that sneering at him,” said Kitty; and then feeling that she had perhaps made rather a fool of herself she changed the conversation, and in a minute was laughing at some rather pointless story, chaffing another man about some joke there was against him, and seeming to be in the wildest spirits.“What good fun that woman is; such a lot of ‘go’ in her,” said one of the men who had left the place to another as they walked home together. “I don’t like to hear her,” said the other, a man whose ideals were somewhat higher, though his habits of life were even more irregular than those of most men on the Diamond Fields. “She is such a good little woman—a deal too good to talk as she does.”These men would have been surprised if they had seen the woman they were talking about whom they had left in such high spirits. The place was empty, she was leaning with her elbows on the bar and her shapely hands covering her face, sobbing as if her heart would break. Yes, she thought, she was a fool to have cared anything for him or any other man. Were they not all either hard, selfish, and heartless, or reckless, prodigal, and hopeless?With all her knowledge of the world she lived in, she had made what her experience told her was the most hopeless of mistakes a woman can commit, for she had let herself care a great deal too much for Jack, the ne’er-do-well and loafer, whose fate his old friends had been discussing. What they had said was probably true, she thought; it was no use doing anything for him. She had tried to help him. She had found some money to send him on a prospecting trip down the Vaal—not because she believed in the new mine he was prospecting, but because she thought it would be a good thing for him to get away from Kimberley—but here he was, having left his work to look after itself, back again in the camp at Kimberley, enjoying its pleasures such as they were. Yes, they were right, there was not much chance for him: his associates were about the worst lot in the camp. He seemed to be going the road which has taken so many a Kimberley man to the prison, yet she couldn’t leave him to travel it. Ah, what a fool she was, she thought. She had forgotten to call her boy to shut the place up though it was late, and she hears a step at the door. At once she wipes her eyes and looks herself again.He was a man of about five-and-twenty. Once he must have been very good-looking, and even then his face had some of its old grace about it. Now, however, it told a very ugly story plainly enough. It was haggard and worn with drink and dissipation, and he had a reckless, defiant expression as if he refused to show a shame he felt. Even for the Diamond Fields his dress was rather careless. One of his eyes was discoloured, while on his cheek he had marks of a more recent cut. Any one who knew colonial life could sum him up. An Englishman well-born, who has gone to the bad; a type of man to be met with all over the colonies, the man who has been sent abroad so that he should not disgrace his people at home. There are openings for such men abroad, so their kind friends at home say, and so there are;—canteen-doors, the gates of divers colonial jails, and then one six feet by two, not made too deep, the job being badly paid for.Staggering up to the bar he asked Kitty how she was, and called for a drink. There was rather a sharper tone than usual in her voice as she told him that it was too late and that she was going to close. “You had better go back to the ‘Corner Bar,’ that is more in your line than this place, isn’t it?” she added.“All right,” he said, “I will clear out. I suppose I am not good enough for this shanty. So good night.”“Stop,” she said, changing her mind as he turned to go away; “you needn’t be in such a hurry; I want to ask you something. What are you doing—where are you staying now?”“Staying? Oh, anywhere. I slept on the veldt last night; I am going to sleep at old Sloeman’s place to-night. He is a good sort, is old Sloeman—don’t turn his back on a man because he is down on his luck. I am going to work with him.”Mr Sloeman was the owner of some claims in one of the mines which nobody else had ever made pay, but in which, without doing much work, he professed to have found a great many diamonds. He also was the proprietor of a canteen of more than shady reputation, and had an interest in one or two Kaffir stores. Some people were unkind enough to suggest that the diamonds he professed to find in his claims were bought at his canteen, or at his stores, from Kaffirs who had stolen them from their masters’ claims. Mr Sloeman was notorious for the kindly interest he took in likely young men who were out of work. He gave them a billet in one of his stores, or in his canteen, or as an overseer to work in those wonderful claims. Curiously enough a large proportion of those young men had attracted the attention of the detective police, and had found their way to the prison charged with buying stolen diamonds; but Mr Sloeman himself prospered.“Stop, Jack, you are not going up there to-ight. One of my rooms is empty, you can have that. I wouldn’t go up there to-night,” said Kitty.Jack said he would go—he was expected there.“Stop, Jack, you’re not so bad that you can’t talk sense. You know what old Sloeman means, and what his game is. You have always been straight, whatever they can say of you. Don’t have anything to do with that old thief!”“Yes, and a lot of good being straight has done me. Old Sloeman is a good deal better than the lot who turn their backs on me, and, thief or not, I am going to work with him?” Jack said as he turned to leave the place.Kitty gave a look at him as he lurched to the door, and then determined that she would have her way.“Well, Jack, have a drink before you go. I am sorry for what I said just now. We will have a drink together,” said Kitty, as she took down a bottle of whiskey and some soda-water. Jack did not refuse—he seldom did refuse such an offer.“Well, that will about finish him. It seems a shame, but he shan’t go up there to-night, and that will settle it,” she thought to herself as she more than half filled a tumbler with whiskey.“That is rather a stiffish drink,” he said as he finished it. Then he had another, and forgot all about going up to Sloeman’s, and Kitty called her Kaffir boy to shut up the place and put Jack to bed in the spare room.The next morning, when she was at her breakfast, her Kaffir servant came running and showing his white teeth. “ThebaasI put to bed last night, him plenty bad this morning, Missis.”“Take him this, he will get all right,” said Kitty, giving him some brandy in a glass and a bottle of soda-water. “That won’t hurt him, though he will have to knock it off and pull himself together, for this child is going to look after him,” she added to herself.Very soon the Kaffir came back. “Thebaashe drink the brandy and throw de soda at me. I think him going mad,” he said, rubbing his head.Kitty was not much alarmed; she had seen a good deal of that sort of thing. She wondered whether it would be any good, if it were possible to persuade Jack to become a Good Templar. She felt afraid that it would not be very easy, and that he would shun the rejoicing there would be over him. He wanted some one to keep him straight, she thought, and woman-like, she began to believe that one of her sex could do it. After some time Jack came out of his room. He had a blank stare on his face and said nothing, but walked into the street without his hat on. He was evidently queer, very queer, Kitty thought, as she led him back to his room and then sent her boy for the doctor.“He is in for a bad go of fever; rather a nasty case—typhoid symptoms; knocked his constitution to bits with drink,” said the doctor. “He will want a lot of looking after. He had better go to the hospital—the free ward—the paying wards are full; not that they would be much in his line if they were not,” he added.“I think he had better stay here, doctor,” answered Kitty. “I will see after nursing him; you know, doctor, nursing is rather my forte.”“No one can see after him better than you, my dear,” said the doctor, who knew Kitty well. “I fancy, however, he won’t be a very profitable boarder for you; but that’s your look out.”“Oh, that is all right,” said Kitty. “Come and see him again soon, doctor; remember I sent for you.”The doctor said he would come round again soon, and drove off—thinking what a good little woman Kitty was, and wondering whether there was anything more than pity in her feeling for that ne’er-do-weel Jack Douglas.“I trust she don’t care for him, for I am afraid there would be only trouble in it for her, however it turned out,” he thought to himself.The doctor was right; it turned out a very nasty case of fever, and for weeks it looked very black. For a time ‘The Frozen Bar’ lost its popularity. Kitty was always afraid that her customers were making too much noise, and in fact she showed that she would be more pleased if they had kept away from her establishment altogether. She was very seldom to be seen behind the bar, and when she was, there was none of her old brightness and fun about her. The old merry, almost reckless, look had left her, and there was a more tender and soft expression in her face. She spent most of her time in a room behind the house—the coolest and best bedroom she had. Its late tenant, one of her most solvent boarders, had been somewhat disturbed and a good deal affronted at being moved out of it, but Kitty was determined to have it for the sick man, who for weeks was tossing on the bed in delirium. For a long time he did not recognise her or know where he was; he was a boy at school or a cadet at Sandhurst again. Then the delirium left him and he knew her, though he hardly seemed to ask himself where he was or how she came to be looking after him. Perhaps the hours that poor little Kitty spent nursing him as he got better were some of the happiest in her life. Then he was never happy when she was away from him, and he used to watch her as a sick dog watches its master. He seemed so different, so much more like what he had been once, and so unlike what he had become on the Diamond Fields. When he grew stronger and able to talk about how he became ill, tears came into his eyes when he thanked her for her kindness. “If it had not been for you I should have gone up to old Sloeman’s place at the West End, and if I had not died there should have become one of his lot,” he said. “How good you have been to me!”As he grew stronger she began to think that he knew her secret, and there was something in his face which seemed to tell her that he felt something more than gratitude for her. Then she hardly ever came near him. He did not want any more nursing, she thought. It was the first day he had got out of bed; she had been talking to him about himself in her old cheery manner, telling him that if he choose to pull himself together there was no reason why he should not succeed and do as well as any one else, when what she had been half expecting for some time came.“Hers was the only influence,” he said, “which could keep him straight. He knew she cared for him. If she would marry him he would be able to keep away from drink.”Then she told him the truth. Yes, she did care for him, and would marry if he wished it. But first of all he must show her that he could reform; he must swear off drink, and what was more to the point, keep off it too. She wasn’t any great shakes, she knew, but she wasn’t going to marry a man who was always on the drink. She knew too much to do that, she said.He promised that he would reform, and it was agreed that they were to wait for a year and then they were to be married and leave the Diamond Fields, and go to some other colony. He was no great prize, this shattered invalid, who was far more likely than not to return to his old ways. But Kitty, for all that, had a hard struggle with herself not to take him as he was, instead of waiting and perhaps losing him altogether. “No, she would not marry him there, it wouldn’t be fair to him,” she said; “she would wait till he was the man he was before he ever took to drink, and then if he cared to marry her she would be the proudest woman in the world.”Then she talked over a plan she had for him. She had bought some claims in the Dutoitspan mine, and he must work them for her. She said she was sure the ground would turn out well, and they would make lots of money.He promised that he would turn over a new leaf, and he said and thought too that she was the kindest-hearted and dearest little woman in the world; and he felt eager to begin work, and show her what a splendid specimen of the reformed character he was going to become.That is how Jack Douglas, who had utterly gone to the bad in the opinion of most men who knew him, got a start again.Of course their claims ought to have turned out well, and they ought to have found a big diamond which would have made their fortune all at once. But Kitty’s belief in the claims proved to be rather unfounded: some weeks they paid expenses, some they did not. Jack Douglas ought at once to have become a reformed character, but he did not. More than once work was at a standstill in their claims for days, and he had to come to Kitty, shamefaced and haggard, with a sad story of transgression to tell. But she persuaded him to try again, and did her best to keep him straight, and at last he became stronger and better. Men began to think that he had some chance, he had been steady for a long time. Kitty was going to succeed in making something of him. He began to take some pride in himself, and at the end of twelve months he was a better man than he had been for years.At that time there was an outbreak of Kaffirs and Griquas on the border of the province, and troops were raised on the Diamond Fields. There was plenty of military enthusiasm. Times were bad, and the Diamond Fields answered to the call for men to serve their country at five shillings a day. Store-keepers who could supply uniforms, and transport-riders who had waggons and oxen, came forward to help their country in its hour of need at a considerable profit to themselves. For Douglas, the chance was just what he longed for.Kitty did not try to prevent him from going out, for she thought it was the best thing he could do. She knew all his history now. How he had got into some trouble at Sandhurst, and had been sent abroad by his stern old uncle, who had determined not to leave the family acres to one who, he thought, was certain only to bring disgrace upon his family. She thought it only natural that he should wish to volunteer and take the chance of showing that there was something in him. When the Diamond Field Horse left the camp she went out to see them off, and felt proud of her lover, as she saw him ride away in his troop. “He won’t come back a trooper,” she said to herself, “if there is much fighting to be done.”She was right about his not coming back a trooper. When there was any work to be done, he was in the thick of it, and he had some opportunities of showing that soldiering was a trade he was fit for. Promotion, such as it is, comes quickly in a colonial corps, and when he came back he had a commission. He came back a new man, proud of and confident in himself. For years his life had been all down the hill, and until Kitty had stretched out her kind little hand to help him, every one had been content to speculate as to how long it would take him to get to the bottom. Perhaps he would have hardly cared to think how much she had done for him. She was so fond of him and proud of him, it was only natural, he thought, but still it was gratifying. He was very pleased to see her again, and her bright little face and cheery manner were very charming to him.He, of course, was conscious that he was going to marry beneath him. Still he had a notion that he would get on better with Kitty than any one else he had ever met. Though he was a gentleman of very excellent family, he was not a very refined person, and Kitty’s peculiarities of manner were not drawbacks in his opinion.The day for the wedding had been almost settled when the troubles in Zululand began. Jack must needs go to it. It was too good a chance to miss, and Kitty had to make up her mind to wait. So she said good-bye to him, and he went off to join a corps of Irregular Colonial Horse as a Captain. She stopped at Kimberley and looked after the ‘Frozen Bar.’ She was terribly anxious when the first bad news came from Zululand, and until she heard that he was all right. But she tried to be brave and be thankful that he was having a chance of distinguishing himself.She prospered fairly well, though she began to encourage a class of custom which was not very remunerative. The warriors who had served with Jack in the Diamond Field Horse took to frequenting the bar. They found that if they only talked enough about Jack, and told stories that redounded to his credit, Kitty would take the cards they signed for drinks in lieu of ready money without murmuring, and she would listen to these stories, somewhat to the neglect of gentlemen of the diamond market who, if their lives were less romantic, paid with greater regularity for what they had to drink.There was a good deal to do in Zululand for the Irregular Horse, and when there was anything to be done, Jack was in his right place. He was on the Zlobani Hill on that fatal day on which so many of the Light Horse were killed. There were a good many brave deeds done that day, comrade risking life to save comrade in that wild rush from the Kaffirs who had again out-manoeuvred their white foes. Jack was cool and collected on that day, as he usually was in danger. As he rode down the hill for his life he heard a shout behind him. A young Guardsman, who had come out on special service, had come to grief; his horse had been killed and the Kaffirs were almost upon him. How Jack got through the Kaffirs and managed to get away with the man he took up he hardly knows, but he did, and he brought him back to safety.It happened that the youngster whom Jack saved was the son of a great English statesman, and heir to half a county; and this was all the better for him, for nothing now-a-days gets much of a price unless it is well advertised: and the brave deeds of soldiers (as some men have learnt to their profit) are no exceptions to this rule.As it was, Jack’s deed was much written about by special correspondents, and when the news came home, much talked about in London drawing-rooms; and in time the news came out to South Africa, that Jack was to be made a V.C.When the news came to Kimberley, some one lent Kitty a packet of English papers so that she could read what they were saying about Jack at home. She had taken them and one of Jack’s letters and had gone up the Garden, as a desolate bit of land was called where some trees had been planted, and some feeble attempt at gardening had been made; she wanted to be by herself to think it all over.She read all about Jack in the papers, and learnt that he was the nephew of the General Douglas, who was a distinguished officer in the Crimea. The report said he had been at Harrow, but was silent about his career at Sandhurst.The papers were full of him, and every one at home seemed to be proud of the brave young colonial soldier, who at the peril of his life had saved the high-born boy, about whom everybody was glad to have an excuse for talking and writing. His picture was in two of the illustrated papers. There was a leader about him in one of the dailies. Of course Kitty thought the latter a very beautiful piece of writing, and wondered what all the classical quotations meant, and who the long-named persons to whom Jack was compared were. And this was the man who loved her—this hero, this brave soldier. How she wished she was different from what she was!—a lady who would be fit for him, not a poor half-taught woman, who had lived a hard life amongst rough, coarse people, and had got the little education she had from the bits of plays she had learnt and the novels she had read, and the queer side of society which she had seen. Well, if she was the finest lady in the world, she thought, she would not be worthy of him. Cynical little Kitty, who was so well able to sum any one up at their right value, and whose estimates were seldom too favourable, had at last set up an idol which she bowed down before and worshipped none the less reverently because her experience ought to have taught her that it was made of rather poor clay. She had been sitting some time thinking over her past, and wondering what her future would be, torturing herself by doubting whether he really did care for her, or could care for her, and reading over his letter again and again, when she heard Jack Douglas’s name spoken by some one. She was sitting on a bench by a cactus hedge; there were two men on the other side who were talking about him, as a good many people in Kimberley were. “I know all about him,” one man said; “he comes from the same part of the country that I do. He would have had his uncle, General Douglas’s property, only he got into some row at Sandhurst, and his uncle said he had disgraced himself, and turned him adrift. My people tell me that the General intends to have him back again and forgive him, he is so pleased at his getting the V.C. So he’d be all right, only he has been fool enough to have got engaged to some woman out here. What’s her name? That woman who keeps ‘The Frozen Bar.’“By George, what a fool! Not that she isn’t a jolly little woman in her way, but one wouldn’t care to introduce her to one’s people at home as one’s wife,” said the other.“Yes; I spoke to him about it when he was here last, but he didn’t take what I said over well. I fancy he knew he was making a fool of himself and was sick of it, though it didn’t matter then, as there wasn’t much chance of his uncle ever making it up with him,” the other man said, and then they began talking about something else, little knowing who had overheard, and what a nasty wound their words had made.Kitty sat still where she was, listening to the two men’s voices. For some minutes she felt numb and stupid, knowing that she was wounded terribly, without knowing how or why. Then she began to realise what the scrap of conversation she had overheard meant. “He was making a fool of himself, he could not get out of it,” that is what his friends were saying about him, she thought to herself, and it was true enough too, at least the first proposition was, she told herself. He had talked of his early life to her once or twice, but always as something that was past and gone, and which had nothing to do with him as he was then. Now, however, she knew that he could go back to it if it were not for her. He had got to choose between giving up his chance of returning to it and giving her up; that was all. She could remember something in his manner when she last saw him which she did not quite understand then; now she knew what it meant—he knew he was making a fool of himself.Now, when he had distinguished himself he would feel this all the more. She alone was keeping him from the life he was born for. Now when he knew what he was giving up, what would he do? Would he come back to her out of pity or duty or a sense of honour, or would he desert her? No, he never should do that; she would never give him the chance. If he married her how often he would repent it!—how often he would think of what he had given up for her! “Yes,” she thought to herself, as she walked back to her house with all the gaiety and happiness taken out of her life, “she saw her way.”Some weeks after Ulundi had been fought and the war was over, Jack Douglas was sitting in an arm-chair at the Crown Hotel at Maritzburg, reading a letter from England. It was from his uncle, the General, and was to the point, as the old gentleman’s letters usually were. He had heard of Jack’s gallant conduct, and was very pleased. He was content to let bygones be bygones and receive him again. He was to come back and live at the Hall, and he would have the place eventually. The General went on to say that he had met with some one who knew of Jack at Kimberley, and had heard an absurd story of his intending to make a disgraceful marriage with a barmaid. If he intended to do that he need not answer the letter; otherwise he had better come home as soon as the war was over. Jack read the letter over and over again with a troubled expression on his face. He did not like to give Kitty up. He was bound not to. He remembered, and it was not a very pleasant memory, all she had done for him, and what he probably would have been if she had not again and again helped him up after he had slipped down. If it had not been for her a broad arrow would as likely as not have been the decoration which he would have gained. Then what a jolly, cheery, bright little woman she was, and how devoted she was to him! He wouldn’t give her up, be hanged if he would; he had plenty of money in his pocket, was thoroughly pleased with himself, and every one thought him a very fine fellow, so he would do what he liked. He would write the General a fine, manly letter, full of generous feeling, telling him that he would not give up the woman who had done so much for him.He sat down and wrote away, and then read his letter over. There was a little too much tall talk in it; it was the sort of thing that would make his uncle very angry. Jack tore it up. Then as he began to write another letter he seemed to see the other side of the question. How much he was giving up—a fine old place, as good a position as a man could want, and instead of that he was to end his days in South Africa or in some other colony. His V.C. would not be much good to him unless he stuck to colonial soldiering, which was a poor life. No; he would put off writing the letter. Then he remembered that he had not heard from Kitty for some time. She used to send him every week a funny, ill-spelt letter, in which all the gossip and news of Kimberley which found its way to ‘The Frozen Bar’—and there was very little that did not—was told very humorously. He would walk to the Post Office. On his way he met several men he knew who were in high spirits because they were going home. “Wasn’t Jack going home too?” they asked. “What, going to stop in that forsaken country! By Jove it seemed a pity too, after he had scored so.” However, they were too full of their own affairs and the good time they intended to have, to trouble themselves much about him. Jack, as he parted with them, felt he wished he was going with them. It was useless to try not to regret it. He was giving up a great deal for Kitty. He was a fine fellow, and as an honourable man there was no other course for him to take, but it was a thousand pities things did not arrange themselves better. There was a letter from Kitty: but curiously enough it was dated from Capetown. At first, as he read it, he hardly could understand it.“Dear Jack,—“It is all a mistake there being anything between you and me. We don’t suit. Your people would have nothing to do with me, and you had better go home to them, now that every one must be proud of you. You would break down as a returned prodigal if you had to answer for me as well as yourself. Don’t answer this letter, for I am sick of the country, and before you get this shall have cleared. Kitty.”It would be difficult to describe Jack’s feelings as he read this letter again and again. At first he felt mortified to think that Kitty could have persuaded herself to give him up. Then through the matter-of-fact wording of the letter he saw the real state of the case, and knew that she was giving him up, as she thought, for his good. He would follow her, and tell her that he refused to be released from their engagement, and tell her that after all she had done he cared more for her than he did for England, or position, or anything else. Yes, that would be the right thing to do, he told himself, only he remembered that he did not know where she was, so he could not answer her letter or go to her. Well, it was not his fault; if she would give him up he could not help it. After all, the strongest feeling he experienced was one of relief. He had got out of it. He would answer his uncle’s letter and say nothing about Kitty. What a lucky thing it was that he had put off writing!He did not, however, write by that mail. He went home by it himself, instead. When he got home he was welcomed most cordially. His uncle considered that he had atoned for the disgrace he had got into, and felt that he could once more take a pride in his nephew, and think with pleasure of his representing their family, and owning the old place when he was gone.Every one in the county agreed with the old General, and Jack was made much of and looked upon as a hero. His uncle gave him some horses, and he had plenty of hunting and shooting, and generally had a good time of it. Of course he sometimes thought about Kitty, but when he did he half confessed to himself that not for her or any one else would he give up the life he was enjoying so much, and go back to South Africa. Besides, he did not know where she was. He might have found out, however, for she was at Kimberley, and was still the proprietress of ‘The Frozen Bar.’ She had never gone farther than Capetown; something told her that she would not have much difficulty in defeating any attempt Jack might make to find out where she had gone to. A list of passengers of a steamer bound for home told her that she need not take any more trouble on that score. He had taken her at her word, and had wasted very little time in making up his mind to do so. Then she went back to ‘The Frozen Bar,’ for the treaty she was making for its sale was not concluded—and she is there still. She has made a good deal of money, and lost the greater part of it speculating in shares. And it is to her bad luck that some people on the Diamond Fields attribute her being a little more hard and bitter than she was. Still, she is good-natured and kind-hearted, and ready to help people who are in trouble, though she is not likely to have a more tender feeling than pity for any one. The other day she saw Jack’s wedding in an English paper. He married a lady of good family and some property, who was fascinated by his good looks and his reputation as a hero. He is prosperous and respected, and he has almost forgotten all about the days when he seemed to be such a hopeless ne’er-do-well.

Some years ago there was at Kimberley a very popular house of entertainment, called ‘The Frozen Bar,’ which had been in existence since the early days of diamond-digging, and had become one of the institutions of the Fields. From a mere bar it had grown into a hotel—bedrooms having been put up in the compound behind it, and a dining-room opened for the use of its boarders. Still the old name—which had been a happy thought in the old days when ice was unknown and yearned for on the Fields—was retained. So far as it was possible for an iron house under a blazing South African sun to be kept cool, it justified its name. Ice, when the ice-machines had not broken down or the ice-manufacturers gone on the spree, was very plentiful there. Hot brandies and sodas were never served out. And it was always refreshing to see its proprietress, pretty little Kitty Clay, who was always cheery and bright, however trying the times or the weather might be, and would look fresh, clean, and cool even in the misery of a Diamond Field dust-storm.

‘The Frozen Bar’ was used by men who as a rule did not care to frequent common canteens and rub shoulders with the people who were to be met with in such places. Bad characters fought rather shy of it. For instance, Jim Paliter, the gambler and sharper, who was always lurking about to look for some unwary one who would first shake the dice for drinks, and afterwards to while away the time throw for sovereigns, never made it his hunting-ground. His self-assurance was proof against a good deal, but Kitty’s quiet way of letting him know that his room was preferred to his company was too much for him. I.D.B.’s, as that section of the Kimberley public who live by buying stolen diamonds are called, did not care to use it, unless they were prosperous and in the higher walks of their trade. It was situated near the Kimberley mine and the diamond market, and all day long it did a roaring trade. The crowd who thronged its doors was representative of Kimberley, for it contained men of many different races and types. Men came there dressed in every description of costume, from moleskins, flannel shirts, and slouch hats, to suits of London-made clothes sent out from home by West End tailors. You would see the rugged, weather-worn faces of men who had been diggers all over the world wherever the earth had yielded gold or precious stones, and the dark, hungry-eyed, bird-of-prey-like faces of Jews who are drawn to the spot where men find precious stones as vultures are drawn to a corpse. It was in the afternoon, just after luncheon, that the place would be most crowded. Then Kitty would be in her element, taking money, though more often ‘good-fors,’ answering questions, chaffing, and laughing over the news of the day—the latest scandal or the best joke against some one—and making comments upon it, very often more humorous than polite. Poor, cheery, big-hearted little Kitty, the best woman in the world—so many a man said, and with some reason. Maybe she used to laugh merrily enough at stories she ought not to have listened to, and the remarks she made were perhaps not over womanly, still no one could deny that she had a tender woman’s heart. In the early days of the Fields, when hardships were greater, and the ups and downs of life were more marked, there were many who had good reason to be grateful to her. She had been a friend in need to many a man who from illness or accident had been pushed down and was likely to be trampled upon in the fierce struggle for existence in the first days of the rush to the new diggings. There were generally boarding at the ‘Frozen Bar’ one or two men for whose custom the other licensed victuallers did not yearn—men whom Kitty had known in their brighter days, and whom she would not go back upon because they were down on their luck and out of a billet.

She was nearer thirty than twenty, and her life had been rather a hard one, though it had left very few traces on her bright little face, and her troubles had not made her laugh less cheery or her smile less kind, though perhaps they had caused that dash of cynicism which sometimes showed itself in her talk. She had begun life as a ballet-girl in a London theatre, had travelled half over the world with a theatrical company, and at Cape Town had married a Diamond field man who had taken her up to Kimberley.

Her husband, whom she had never cared for much, turned out anything but a satisfactory one. But her married life did not last very long. Less than a year after her marriage, a middle-aged female arrived on the Diamond Fields and laid claim to her husband, and as she was a person of great determination, and was able to prove that she had married him some years before in London, she carried him off in triumph, leaving Kitty to find out whether or no a bad husband was better than none at all. Kitty would probably have answered this in the negative, for she was very well able to take care of herself. She started ‘The Frozen Bar’ and prospered there, and if she had only been good at saving money would have become quite a rich woman.

One evening there were several men lounging in the bar listening to Kitty’s chaff and stories, when some one started a subject which made her look a good deal graver than usual. “So your friend Jack is back again in the camp,” one of her customers had said.

“Jack—which Jack? there are a good many Jacks on the Fields, you know,” Kitty answered; but with a note of trouble in her voice which suggested that the other’s words had conveyed some news to her that she was sorry to hear.

“Jack Douglas, I mean. He has let his prospecting job down the river slide, and he is back in the camp again, and he has been back for a week, and been on the spree all the time.”

“How that chap has gone to the bad! I remember him when he was quite a decent fellow, and to-day I saw him with some of the biggest thieves in the camp—Jim Paliter, Ike Sloeman, and all that gang.”

“Mark my words, we shall see Jack Douglas run in for I.D.B. some of these fine days; he is going that way pretty quick,” another man said; and there was something in his tone and expression as he spoke which irritated Kitty into showing a good deal of feeling.

“Why do you talk about my friend Jack? I don’t have friends, only customers, and when they have spent their money and gone to grief there is an end of them so far as I am concerned. But he used to be your friend Jack once upon a time; why don’t some of you fellows try and give him a help instead of pointing at him, and saying he has gone to the bad?” she said.

“Oh, he is no good; he has gone too far to be helped,”—“It’s all his own fault,”—“He will never do any good here, he ought to clear out,” were the answers to Kitty’s suggestion. The men, though they talked slightingly enough of Jack, looked, one or two of them, half ashamed, for Jack had been a popular man on the Fields in the old days when he owned claims and was not badly off, and the men who discussed his fate so coolly had once been glad enough to be his friends.

“Clear out indeed! Where to? To the devil for all you care. That is so like you men; that is how you stick to a friend.”

“Listen to Kitty; why, she seems to be quite sweet on Jack Douglas. Look out, Kitty, he would not be a good partner in the business; why, he’d precious soon drink up the profits,” said a little Jew who had been listening to the conversation though no one had been speaking to him.

An angry flush came across Kitty’s face. For once, she could not think of a neat retort, and she answered, showing that she was hurt. “Look here, Mr Moses or Abrams, or whatever your name is, suppose you keep your advice till it’s asked for. I never spoke to you when I talked about people helping Jack; no one expects one of your sort to help a man, and Jack would not care to take any help from you.”

“Don’t know about not wanting my help; he is glad enough to be helped by some very queer people,” said the little Jew as he walked out of the place, grumbling out something about never coming in again.

“Douglas may be a fool, and he may have gone to the bad, but I hate to hear a little cad like that sneering at him,” said Kitty; and then feeling that she had perhaps made rather a fool of herself she changed the conversation, and in a minute was laughing at some rather pointless story, chaffing another man about some joke there was against him, and seeming to be in the wildest spirits.

“What good fun that woman is; such a lot of ‘go’ in her,” said one of the men who had left the place to another as they walked home together. “I don’t like to hear her,” said the other, a man whose ideals were somewhat higher, though his habits of life were even more irregular than those of most men on the Diamond Fields. “She is such a good little woman—a deal too good to talk as she does.”

These men would have been surprised if they had seen the woman they were talking about whom they had left in such high spirits. The place was empty, she was leaning with her elbows on the bar and her shapely hands covering her face, sobbing as if her heart would break. Yes, she thought, she was a fool to have cared anything for him or any other man. Were they not all either hard, selfish, and heartless, or reckless, prodigal, and hopeless?

With all her knowledge of the world she lived in, she had made what her experience told her was the most hopeless of mistakes a woman can commit, for she had let herself care a great deal too much for Jack, the ne’er-do-well and loafer, whose fate his old friends had been discussing. What they had said was probably true, she thought; it was no use doing anything for him. She had tried to help him. She had found some money to send him on a prospecting trip down the Vaal—not because she believed in the new mine he was prospecting, but because she thought it would be a good thing for him to get away from Kimberley—but here he was, having left his work to look after itself, back again in the camp at Kimberley, enjoying its pleasures such as they were. Yes, they were right, there was not much chance for him: his associates were about the worst lot in the camp. He seemed to be going the road which has taken so many a Kimberley man to the prison, yet she couldn’t leave him to travel it. Ah, what a fool she was, she thought. She had forgotten to call her boy to shut the place up though it was late, and she hears a step at the door. At once she wipes her eyes and looks herself again.

He was a man of about five-and-twenty. Once he must have been very good-looking, and even then his face had some of its old grace about it. Now, however, it told a very ugly story plainly enough. It was haggard and worn with drink and dissipation, and he had a reckless, defiant expression as if he refused to show a shame he felt. Even for the Diamond Fields his dress was rather careless. One of his eyes was discoloured, while on his cheek he had marks of a more recent cut. Any one who knew colonial life could sum him up. An Englishman well-born, who has gone to the bad; a type of man to be met with all over the colonies, the man who has been sent abroad so that he should not disgrace his people at home. There are openings for such men abroad, so their kind friends at home say, and so there are;—canteen-doors, the gates of divers colonial jails, and then one six feet by two, not made too deep, the job being badly paid for.

Staggering up to the bar he asked Kitty how she was, and called for a drink. There was rather a sharper tone than usual in her voice as she told him that it was too late and that she was going to close. “You had better go back to the ‘Corner Bar,’ that is more in your line than this place, isn’t it?” she added.

“All right,” he said, “I will clear out. I suppose I am not good enough for this shanty. So good night.”

“Stop,” she said, changing her mind as he turned to go away; “you needn’t be in such a hurry; I want to ask you something. What are you doing—where are you staying now?”

“Staying? Oh, anywhere. I slept on the veldt last night; I am going to sleep at old Sloeman’s place to-night. He is a good sort, is old Sloeman—don’t turn his back on a man because he is down on his luck. I am going to work with him.”

Mr Sloeman was the owner of some claims in one of the mines which nobody else had ever made pay, but in which, without doing much work, he professed to have found a great many diamonds. He also was the proprietor of a canteen of more than shady reputation, and had an interest in one or two Kaffir stores. Some people were unkind enough to suggest that the diamonds he professed to find in his claims were bought at his canteen, or at his stores, from Kaffirs who had stolen them from their masters’ claims. Mr Sloeman was notorious for the kindly interest he took in likely young men who were out of work. He gave them a billet in one of his stores, or in his canteen, or as an overseer to work in those wonderful claims. Curiously enough a large proportion of those young men had attracted the attention of the detective police, and had found their way to the prison charged with buying stolen diamonds; but Mr Sloeman himself prospered.

“Stop, Jack, you are not going up there to-ight. One of my rooms is empty, you can have that. I wouldn’t go up there to-night,” said Kitty.

Jack said he would go—he was expected there.

“Stop, Jack, you’re not so bad that you can’t talk sense. You know what old Sloeman means, and what his game is. You have always been straight, whatever they can say of you. Don’t have anything to do with that old thief!”

“Yes, and a lot of good being straight has done me. Old Sloeman is a good deal better than the lot who turn their backs on me, and, thief or not, I am going to work with him?” Jack said as he turned to leave the place.

Kitty gave a look at him as he lurched to the door, and then determined that she would have her way.

“Well, Jack, have a drink before you go. I am sorry for what I said just now. We will have a drink together,” said Kitty, as she took down a bottle of whiskey and some soda-water. Jack did not refuse—he seldom did refuse such an offer.

“Well, that will about finish him. It seems a shame, but he shan’t go up there to-night, and that will settle it,” she thought to herself as she more than half filled a tumbler with whiskey.

“That is rather a stiffish drink,” he said as he finished it. Then he had another, and forgot all about going up to Sloeman’s, and Kitty called her Kaffir boy to shut up the place and put Jack to bed in the spare room.

The next morning, when she was at her breakfast, her Kaffir servant came running and showing his white teeth. “ThebaasI put to bed last night, him plenty bad this morning, Missis.”

“Take him this, he will get all right,” said Kitty, giving him some brandy in a glass and a bottle of soda-water. “That won’t hurt him, though he will have to knock it off and pull himself together, for this child is going to look after him,” she added to herself.

Very soon the Kaffir came back. “Thebaashe drink the brandy and throw de soda at me. I think him going mad,” he said, rubbing his head.

Kitty was not much alarmed; she had seen a good deal of that sort of thing. She wondered whether it would be any good, if it were possible to persuade Jack to become a Good Templar. She felt afraid that it would not be very easy, and that he would shun the rejoicing there would be over him. He wanted some one to keep him straight, she thought, and woman-like, she began to believe that one of her sex could do it. After some time Jack came out of his room. He had a blank stare on his face and said nothing, but walked into the street without his hat on. He was evidently queer, very queer, Kitty thought, as she led him back to his room and then sent her boy for the doctor.

“He is in for a bad go of fever; rather a nasty case—typhoid symptoms; knocked his constitution to bits with drink,” said the doctor. “He will want a lot of looking after. He had better go to the hospital—the free ward—the paying wards are full; not that they would be much in his line if they were not,” he added.

“I think he had better stay here, doctor,” answered Kitty. “I will see after nursing him; you know, doctor, nursing is rather my forte.”

“No one can see after him better than you, my dear,” said the doctor, who knew Kitty well. “I fancy, however, he won’t be a very profitable boarder for you; but that’s your look out.”

“Oh, that is all right,” said Kitty. “Come and see him again soon, doctor; remember I sent for you.”

The doctor said he would come round again soon, and drove off—thinking what a good little woman Kitty was, and wondering whether there was anything more than pity in her feeling for that ne’er-do-weel Jack Douglas.

“I trust she don’t care for him, for I am afraid there would be only trouble in it for her, however it turned out,” he thought to himself.

The doctor was right; it turned out a very nasty case of fever, and for weeks it looked very black. For a time ‘The Frozen Bar’ lost its popularity. Kitty was always afraid that her customers were making too much noise, and in fact she showed that she would be more pleased if they had kept away from her establishment altogether. She was very seldom to be seen behind the bar, and when she was, there was none of her old brightness and fun about her. The old merry, almost reckless, look had left her, and there was a more tender and soft expression in her face. She spent most of her time in a room behind the house—the coolest and best bedroom she had. Its late tenant, one of her most solvent boarders, had been somewhat disturbed and a good deal affronted at being moved out of it, but Kitty was determined to have it for the sick man, who for weeks was tossing on the bed in delirium. For a long time he did not recognise her or know where he was; he was a boy at school or a cadet at Sandhurst again. Then the delirium left him and he knew her, though he hardly seemed to ask himself where he was or how she came to be looking after him. Perhaps the hours that poor little Kitty spent nursing him as he got better were some of the happiest in her life. Then he was never happy when she was away from him, and he used to watch her as a sick dog watches its master. He seemed so different, so much more like what he had been once, and so unlike what he had become on the Diamond Fields. When he grew stronger and able to talk about how he became ill, tears came into his eyes when he thanked her for her kindness. “If it had not been for you I should have gone up to old Sloeman’s place at the West End, and if I had not died there should have become one of his lot,” he said. “How good you have been to me!”

As he grew stronger she began to think that he knew her secret, and there was something in his face which seemed to tell her that he felt something more than gratitude for her. Then she hardly ever came near him. He did not want any more nursing, she thought. It was the first day he had got out of bed; she had been talking to him about himself in her old cheery manner, telling him that if he choose to pull himself together there was no reason why he should not succeed and do as well as any one else, when what she had been half expecting for some time came.

“Hers was the only influence,” he said, “which could keep him straight. He knew she cared for him. If she would marry him he would be able to keep away from drink.”

Then she told him the truth. Yes, she did care for him, and would marry if he wished it. But first of all he must show her that he could reform; he must swear off drink, and what was more to the point, keep off it too. She wasn’t any great shakes, she knew, but she wasn’t going to marry a man who was always on the drink. She knew too much to do that, she said.

He promised that he would reform, and it was agreed that they were to wait for a year and then they were to be married and leave the Diamond Fields, and go to some other colony. He was no great prize, this shattered invalid, who was far more likely than not to return to his old ways. But Kitty, for all that, had a hard struggle with herself not to take him as he was, instead of waiting and perhaps losing him altogether. “No, she would not marry him there, it wouldn’t be fair to him,” she said; “she would wait till he was the man he was before he ever took to drink, and then if he cared to marry her she would be the proudest woman in the world.”

Then she talked over a plan she had for him. She had bought some claims in the Dutoitspan mine, and he must work them for her. She said she was sure the ground would turn out well, and they would make lots of money.

He promised that he would turn over a new leaf, and he said and thought too that she was the kindest-hearted and dearest little woman in the world; and he felt eager to begin work, and show her what a splendid specimen of the reformed character he was going to become.

That is how Jack Douglas, who had utterly gone to the bad in the opinion of most men who knew him, got a start again.

Of course their claims ought to have turned out well, and they ought to have found a big diamond which would have made their fortune all at once. But Kitty’s belief in the claims proved to be rather unfounded: some weeks they paid expenses, some they did not. Jack Douglas ought at once to have become a reformed character, but he did not. More than once work was at a standstill in their claims for days, and he had to come to Kitty, shamefaced and haggard, with a sad story of transgression to tell. But she persuaded him to try again, and did her best to keep him straight, and at last he became stronger and better. Men began to think that he had some chance, he had been steady for a long time. Kitty was going to succeed in making something of him. He began to take some pride in himself, and at the end of twelve months he was a better man than he had been for years.

At that time there was an outbreak of Kaffirs and Griquas on the border of the province, and troops were raised on the Diamond Fields. There was plenty of military enthusiasm. Times were bad, and the Diamond Fields answered to the call for men to serve their country at five shillings a day. Store-keepers who could supply uniforms, and transport-riders who had waggons and oxen, came forward to help their country in its hour of need at a considerable profit to themselves. For Douglas, the chance was just what he longed for.

Kitty did not try to prevent him from going out, for she thought it was the best thing he could do. She knew all his history now. How he had got into some trouble at Sandhurst, and had been sent abroad by his stern old uncle, who had determined not to leave the family acres to one who, he thought, was certain only to bring disgrace upon his family. She thought it only natural that he should wish to volunteer and take the chance of showing that there was something in him. When the Diamond Field Horse left the camp she went out to see them off, and felt proud of her lover, as she saw him ride away in his troop. “He won’t come back a trooper,” she said to herself, “if there is much fighting to be done.”

She was right about his not coming back a trooper. When there was any work to be done, he was in the thick of it, and he had some opportunities of showing that soldiering was a trade he was fit for. Promotion, such as it is, comes quickly in a colonial corps, and when he came back he had a commission. He came back a new man, proud of and confident in himself. For years his life had been all down the hill, and until Kitty had stretched out her kind little hand to help him, every one had been content to speculate as to how long it would take him to get to the bottom. Perhaps he would have hardly cared to think how much she had done for him. She was so fond of him and proud of him, it was only natural, he thought, but still it was gratifying. He was very pleased to see her again, and her bright little face and cheery manner were very charming to him.

He, of course, was conscious that he was going to marry beneath him. Still he had a notion that he would get on better with Kitty than any one else he had ever met. Though he was a gentleman of very excellent family, he was not a very refined person, and Kitty’s peculiarities of manner were not drawbacks in his opinion.

The day for the wedding had been almost settled when the troubles in Zululand began. Jack must needs go to it. It was too good a chance to miss, and Kitty had to make up her mind to wait. So she said good-bye to him, and he went off to join a corps of Irregular Colonial Horse as a Captain. She stopped at Kimberley and looked after the ‘Frozen Bar.’ She was terribly anxious when the first bad news came from Zululand, and until she heard that he was all right. But she tried to be brave and be thankful that he was having a chance of distinguishing himself.

She prospered fairly well, though she began to encourage a class of custom which was not very remunerative. The warriors who had served with Jack in the Diamond Field Horse took to frequenting the bar. They found that if they only talked enough about Jack, and told stories that redounded to his credit, Kitty would take the cards they signed for drinks in lieu of ready money without murmuring, and she would listen to these stories, somewhat to the neglect of gentlemen of the diamond market who, if their lives were less romantic, paid with greater regularity for what they had to drink.

There was a good deal to do in Zululand for the Irregular Horse, and when there was anything to be done, Jack was in his right place. He was on the Zlobani Hill on that fatal day on which so many of the Light Horse were killed. There were a good many brave deeds done that day, comrade risking life to save comrade in that wild rush from the Kaffirs who had again out-manoeuvred their white foes. Jack was cool and collected on that day, as he usually was in danger. As he rode down the hill for his life he heard a shout behind him. A young Guardsman, who had come out on special service, had come to grief; his horse had been killed and the Kaffirs were almost upon him. How Jack got through the Kaffirs and managed to get away with the man he took up he hardly knows, but he did, and he brought him back to safety.

It happened that the youngster whom Jack saved was the son of a great English statesman, and heir to half a county; and this was all the better for him, for nothing now-a-days gets much of a price unless it is well advertised: and the brave deeds of soldiers (as some men have learnt to their profit) are no exceptions to this rule.

As it was, Jack’s deed was much written about by special correspondents, and when the news came home, much talked about in London drawing-rooms; and in time the news came out to South Africa, that Jack was to be made a V.C.

When the news came to Kimberley, some one lent Kitty a packet of English papers so that she could read what they were saying about Jack at home. She had taken them and one of Jack’s letters and had gone up the Garden, as a desolate bit of land was called where some trees had been planted, and some feeble attempt at gardening had been made; she wanted to be by herself to think it all over.

She read all about Jack in the papers, and learnt that he was the nephew of the General Douglas, who was a distinguished officer in the Crimea. The report said he had been at Harrow, but was silent about his career at Sandhurst.

The papers were full of him, and every one at home seemed to be proud of the brave young colonial soldier, who at the peril of his life had saved the high-born boy, about whom everybody was glad to have an excuse for talking and writing. His picture was in two of the illustrated papers. There was a leader about him in one of the dailies. Of course Kitty thought the latter a very beautiful piece of writing, and wondered what all the classical quotations meant, and who the long-named persons to whom Jack was compared were. And this was the man who loved her—this hero, this brave soldier. How she wished she was different from what she was!—a lady who would be fit for him, not a poor half-taught woman, who had lived a hard life amongst rough, coarse people, and had got the little education she had from the bits of plays she had learnt and the novels she had read, and the queer side of society which she had seen. Well, if she was the finest lady in the world, she thought, she would not be worthy of him. Cynical little Kitty, who was so well able to sum any one up at their right value, and whose estimates were seldom too favourable, had at last set up an idol which she bowed down before and worshipped none the less reverently because her experience ought to have taught her that it was made of rather poor clay. She had been sitting some time thinking over her past, and wondering what her future would be, torturing herself by doubting whether he really did care for her, or could care for her, and reading over his letter again and again, when she heard Jack Douglas’s name spoken by some one. She was sitting on a bench by a cactus hedge; there were two men on the other side who were talking about him, as a good many people in Kimberley were. “I know all about him,” one man said; “he comes from the same part of the country that I do. He would have had his uncle, General Douglas’s property, only he got into some row at Sandhurst, and his uncle said he had disgraced himself, and turned him adrift. My people tell me that the General intends to have him back again and forgive him, he is so pleased at his getting the V.C. So he’d be all right, only he has been fool enough to have got engaged to some woman out here. What’s her name? That woman who keeps ‘The Frozen Bar.’

“By George, what a fool! Not that she isn’t a jolly little woman in her way, but one wouldn’t care to introduce her to one’s people at home as one’s wife,” said the other.

“Yes; I spoke to him about it when he was here last, but he didn’t take what I said over well. I fancy he knew he was making a fool of himself and was sick of it, though it didn’t matter then, as there wasn’t much chance of his uncle ever making it up with him,” the other man said, and then they began talking about something else, little knowing who had overheard, and what a nasty wound their words had made.

Kitty sat still where she was, listening to the two men’s voices. For some minutes she felt numb and stupid, knowing that she was wounded terribly, without knowing how or why. Then she began to realise what the scrap of conversation she had overheard meant. “He was making a fool of himself, he could not get out of it,” that is what his friends were saying about him, she thought to herself, and it was true enough too, at least the first proposition was, she told herself. He had talked of his early life to her once or twice, but always as something that was past and gone, and which had nothing to do with him as he was then. Now, however, she knew that he could go back to it if it were not for her. He had got to choose between giving up his chance of returning to it and giving her up; that was all. She could remember something in his manner when she last saw him which she did not quite understand then; now she knew what it meant—he knew he was making a fool of himself.

Now, when he had distinguished himself he would feel this all the more. She alone was keeping him from the life he was born for. Now when he knew what he was giving up, what would he do? Would he come back to her out of pity or duty or a sense of honour, or would he desert her? No, he never should do that; she would never give him the chance. If he married her how often he would repent it!—how often he would think of what he had given up for her! “Yes,” she thought to herself, as she walked back to her house with all the gaiety and happiness taken out of her life, “she saw her way.”

Some weeks after Ulundi had been fought and the war was over, Jack Douglas was sitting in an arm-chair at the Crown Hotel at Maritzburg, reading a letter from England. It was from his uncle, the General, and was to the point, as the old gentleman’s letters usually were. He had heard of Jack’s gallant conduct, and was very pleased. He was content to let bygones be bygones and receive him again. He was to come back and live at the Hall, and he would have the place eventually. The General went on to say that he had met with some one who knew of Jack at Kimberley, and had heard an absurd story of his intending to make a disgraceful marriage with a barmaid. If he intended to do that he need not answer the letter; otherwise he had better come home as soon as the war was over. Jack read the letter over and over again with a troubled expression on his face. He did not like to give Kitty up. He was bound not to. He remembered, and it was not a very pleasant memory, all she had done for him, and what he probably would have been if she had not again and again helped him up after he had slipped down. If it had not been for her a broad arrow would as likely as not have been the decoration which he would have gained. Then what a jolly, cheery, bright little woman she was, and how devoted she was to him! He wouldn’t give her up, be hanged if he would; he had plenty of money in his pocket, was thoroughly pleased with himself, and every one thought him a very fine fellow, so he would do what he liked. He would write the General a fine, manly letter, full of generous feeling, telling him that he would not give up the woman who had done so much for him.

He sat down and wrote away, and then read his letter over. There was a little too much tall talk in it; it was the sort of thing that would make his uncle very angry. Jack tore it up. Then as he began to write another letter he seemed to see the other side of the question. How much he was giving up—a fine old place, as good a position as a man could want, and instead of that he was to end his days in South Africa or in some other colony. His V.C. would not be much good to him unless he stuck to colonial soldiering, which was a poor life. No; he would put off writing the letter. Then he remembered that he had not heard from Kitty for some time. She used to send him every week a funny, ill-spelt letter, in which all the gossip and news of Kimberley which found its way to ‘The Frozen Bar’—and there was very little that did not—was told very humorously. He would walk to the Post Office. On his way he met several men he knew who were in high spirits because they were going home. “Wasn’t Jack going home too?” they asked. “What, going to stop in that forsaken country! By Jove it seemed a pity too, after he had scored so.” However, they were too full of their own affairs and the good time they intended to have, to trouble themselves much about him. Jack, as he parted with them, felt he wished he was going with them. It was useless to try not to regret it. He was giving up a great deal for Kitty. He was a fine fellow, and as an honourable man there was no other course for him to take, but it was a thousand pities things did not arrange themselves better. There was a letter from Kitty: but curiously enough it was dated from Capetown. At first, as he read it, he hardly could understand it.

“Dear Jack,—“It is all a mistake there being anything between you and me. We don’t suit. Your people would have nothing to do with me, and you had better go home to them, now that every one must be proud of you. You would break down as a returned prodigal if you had to answer for me as well as yourself. Don’t answer this letter, for I am sick of the country, and before you get this shall have cleared. Kitty.”

“Dear Jack,—

“It is all a mistake there being anything between you and me. We don’t suit. Your people would have nothing to do with me, and you had better go home to them, now that every one must be proud of you. You would break down as a returned prodigal if you had to answer for me as well as yourself. Don’t answer this letter, for I am sick of the country, and before you get this shall have cleared. Kitty.”

It would be difficult to describe Jack’s feelings as he read this letter again and again. At first he felt mortified to think that Kitty could have persuaded herself to give him up. Then through the matter-of-fact wording of the letter he saw the real state of the case, and knew that she was giving him up, as she thought, for his good. He would follow her, and tell her that he refused to be released from their engagement, and tell her that after all she had done he cared more for her than he did for England, or position, or anything else. Yes, that would be the right thing to do, he told himself, only he remembered that he did not know where she was, so he could not answer her letter or go to her. Well, it was not his fault; if she would give him up he could not help it. After all, the strongest feeling he experienced was one of relief. He had got out of it. He would answer his uncle’s letter and say nothing about Kitty. What a lucky thing it was that he had put off writing!

He did not, however, write by that mail. He went home by it himself, instead. When he got home he was welcomed most cordially. His uncle considered that he had atoned for the disgrace he had got into, and felt that he could once more take a pride in his nephew, and think with pleasure of his representing their family, and owning the old place when he was gone.

Every one in the county agreed with the old General, and Jack was made much of and looked upon as a hero. His uncle gave him some horses, and he had plenty of hunting and shooting, and generally had a good time of it. Of course he sometimes thought about Kitty, but when he did he half confessed to himself that not for her or any one else would he give up the life he was enjoying so much, and go back to South Africa. Besides, he did not know where she was. He might have found out, however, for she was at Kimberley, and was still the proprietress of ‘The Frozen Bar.’ She had never gone farther than Capetown; something told her that she would not have much difficulty in defeating any attempt Jack might make to find out where she had gone to. A list of passengers of a steamer bound for home told her that she need not take any more trouble on that score. He had taken her at her word, and had wasted very little time in making up his mind to do so. Then she went back to ‘The Frozen Bar,’ for the treaty she was making for its sale was not concluded—and she is there still. She has made a good deal of money, and lost the greater part of it speculating in shares. And it is to her bad luck that some people on the Diamond Fields attribute her being a little more hard and bitter than she was. Still, she is good-natured and kind-hearted, and ready to help people who are in trouble, though she is not likely to have a more tender feeling than pity for any one. The other day she saw Jack’s wedding in an English paper. He married a lady of good family and some property, who was fascinated by his good looks and his reputation as a hero. He is prosperous and respected, and he has almost forgotten all about the days when he seemed to be such a hopeless ne’er-do-well.

Story 3.Diamond Cut Diamond.It was a delightfully cool evening, after a hot dusty day on the Diamond Fields, and Mr Moses Moss, attorney-at-law of Kimberley, South Africa, was sitting under the verandah of his house, smoking a cigar, and sipping a cool drink as it was his custom to do before turning in for the night. As he smoked his thoughts turned to his prospects and his position, and on the whole they were of a somewhat cheerful and self-satisfied character. It was only a few years since he had hurried away from England a broken man. He had found the temptations to overstep the boundary which separates sharp from malpractice too much for him, and his conduct had attracted the meddlesome attentions of the Incorporated Law Society, who had made itself very disagreeable indeed to him. The time he had spent on the Diamond Fields, however, had done wonders. He was worth a nice little sum of money; and as an attorney and money-lender he had got together a very lucrative connection.On the Diamond Fields he had remembered his English experiences. They had taught him the good old maxim, that honesty was the best policy, and this had been the golden rule of his life, which he had always acted upon so far as compatible with the practice of an attorney whose clients happen, as a matter of fact, to be men of somewhat shady characters.However, he kept always on the windy side of the law, although the temptations to go just a little crooked were very strong. There were at that time many diamonds to be bought, for very reasonable prices, by persons who were content to buy under circumstances which the law punished with great severity. Mr Moss had come to the conclusion, however, that dealing in stolen diamonds was too risky a business to follow. He used to make it his boast that he hardly knew a rough diamond when he saw one, and he said that he never wished to have any dealings in them. Indirectly, of course, he—like every one else on the Diamond Fields—lived by diamonds. His clients as a rule were in what was called the illicit. But he could not help that, he said. Of course he was happy enough to defend any one who had got into trouble for buying stolen diamonds. Then if any one came to him to borrow money it was not his business to ask questions as to what the money was wanted for. The money was generally wanted at once, and gold rather than notes or cheques was in request. But those circumstances did not suggest anything to Mr Moss, or if they did, he kept his thoughts to himself. He was too busy in considering the large percentage he could charge and the security he could get to bother himself about matters that did not concern him. He did not wish to be told anything about what his clients thought of doing with the money they came to him hurriedly to borrow. When on one occasion a man who wanted a hundred pounds in gold at once was indiscreet enough to blurt out something about having a chance to get hold of a ‘big un’ for that sum which was worth ten times the money, Mr Moss was very much hurt at being asked to share any such guilty knowledge. He certainly did not go so far as to refuse to entertain the loan, but he took care to ease his conscience by charging an extra twenty per cent.Some people said that Mr Moss in a way avenged the claimholders who suffered from the depredations of the illicit diamond-buyers, and that he preyed upon them as they preyed on the mining interest, and there is no doubt a good share of the price of many a stolen diamond got into his clutches. It was characteristic of the sources from which he acquired his money, that the very house in which he lived should have once belonged to one Ike Hart, who in his day had been a very notorious buyer of stolen diamonds, and had flourished wonderfully until he bought one diamond too many, which happened to have been sent him by the police. He had had the advantage of Mr Moss’s professional assistance at his trial and advice about his private affairs. Mr Hart had been convicted, and had been sent to do a sentence of hard labour on the Capetown Breakwater, and Mr Moss had become possessed of his house. Ike Hart was said to have sworn that he would be even with Moss, and to have declared that he had been robbed. However, Mr Moss felt satisfied, as he reviewed his career, that he had never done anything that the law could take hold of. If in one or two cases he had grabbed somewhat greedily at his clients’ property, those clients were out of the way of harming him, and there was not the slightest chance of his being made to disgorge any of the plunder he had got together.Mr Moss’s house stood back from the road in a good-sized garden—if you could call a place a garden in which nothing grew but a few cacti and a mass of straggling tobacco-trees—which was separated from the road by a high, corrugated-iron fence.As Mr Moss smoked in his verandah, he began to think that amongst the bushes at the end of the garden he could distinguish a form of a man stooping over the ground. At first he felt nervous; then he became curious, as he made the figure out more clearly. It certainly was the figure of a man, and he seemed to be digging for something. “What was he after? What could he hope to find?” Mr Moss asked himself.He would find out that for himself, he determined. So he got up, and slinking along very quietly in the shade of the fence, he crept up close to the man who, for reasons best known to himself, had visited his compound at night. The man went on working without noticing him. He was digging into the ground with a broken bit of spade, and seemed to be very intent upon what he was about.Close to where the man was digging there was a water-barrel, and Mr Moss got behind it, and watched his visitor with considerable interest. When Mr Moss called to mind who the former owner of the premises was, he began to have a suspicion of what his visitor was looking for. He remembered that there had been some talk of Ike Hart’s having several big diamonds hidden away when he was arrested. The man dug for some time, then scratched about with his hands in the hole, then measured from the wall with a tape-measure, and then set to work again. All of a sudden he threw down the spade and picked something up.Mr Moss’s heart gave a jump when he saw this. The man had picked up a bundle of rag in which something seemed to be wrapped. The stranger unfolded it, and as he did so Mr Moss sprang from behind the water-barrel, and placed his hand on his shoulder.“Who are you? and what’s that you have found in my garden? Come, drop it, or I will call the police,” Mr Moss said, for the other was an undersized, slight man, and he did not feel very much afraid of him.“Leave me alone! keep your hands off, or I will make a hole in yer!” the man answered. As he spoke the attorney saw that he had something in his hand which glistened rather nastily in the moonlight.“Put up that knife, or I will shout out; there is a policeman at the corner of the road, most likely, and they can hear me at the house across the road,” he said.“Leave me alone, then, and I will clear out. I don’t want to have nothing to do with you,” the man said; and he gave a wriggle away.“Give me what you have just taken from my garden, then,” said Mr Moss; “it belongs to me—I saw you pick up the—”“Hush! you fool!” the man said, interrupting him. “Maybe there is a peeler outside in the road, and they would hear that word if they were within half a mile of us.”“Look here, my man, you don’t think I’m going to let you take away what you have just found—you haven’t got a prospecting licence to look for diamonds in my garden, so just give it up, and I will say nothing about what I caught you at.”“You bet you won’t, but it happens the diamond is mine. The party who planted it there left it me; that party was poor Ike Hart, who died the other day in Capetown jail, that’s where I’ve just come from. When poor old Ike saw he weren’t going to live to get out, he manages to tell me about this. He was a pal of mine, was Ike, and he thought he’d do me a good turn. I’ve tramped up here from Capetown to get this big ’un.”“See here, my man,” said Mr Moss, “I don’t want to be hard on you. You say you have a right to the diamond because Ike Hart gave it you—I say it’s mine because it’s in my garden. Suppose we compromise the matter; come into my house, and we will talk it quietly over.”“I don’t mind going into your house, gov’ner, but keep your hands off me, or you’ll have more than you like,” the little man said, emphasising his remarks with a gesture with the knife, which made the attorney feel uncomfortable.“Now, gov’ner, what’s yer game? If you won’t speak first, I will. Come, you’ve got into this by seeing what you have seen, and I don’t mind speaking out fair. What do you say to halves?” the man said, after he had sat down in a chair in Mr Moss’s sitting-room. “There’s enough for us both, seems to me. Ike Hart told me he could easily have got eight thou, for it, and he intended to have taken it home if he hadn’t been run in.”“Eight thousand! You’re talking nonsense. Hart was not such a fool as to think that; but let’s have a look at it,” Mr Moss said, as he got a glance at the stone which the other held in his hand.“No, you don’t, gov’ner,” the man said, as Mr Moss stretched out his hand for the diamond.The attorney thought for a minute or two. For a second the idea flashed across his mind that it might be a police trap. He had never bought a diamond illegally before, and the laws against having rough diamonds in your possession unless you could account for them, and were either a licensed dealer or buyer, were very strict. If he kept the diamond in his possession, instead of giving it up to the Crown, he would be committing a criminal offence, for which he would be liable to a severe punishment. He did not believe that the police would try to trap him. Besides, he was impressed with his visitor’s manner, and thought that he seemed to be anxious to keep the diamond. Moss looked at the diamond, and thought that it was the biggest stone he had ever seen, and he began to long to get it into his possession. He did not, as he said, know much about diamonds, but no one could have lived a few months on the Diamond Fields without knowing that such a stone as the one he saw was worth a great deal of money. Ike Hart was probably right; it was likely enough that he could have got eight thousand for it, and that it was really worth much more. As Mr Moss looked at it, a reckless greed came over him, and he determined that he would have it.“Well, I suppose we needn’t quarrel; your offer is a fair one, we will go halves; and as you know me and I don’t know you, I will have the diamond and will give you your share when I sell it; I dare say I can dispose of it more advantageously than you can,” he said, smiling blandly at his visitor.“Dare say you can, gov’ner; but I sticks to it till I get the pieces for it,” was the answer. And nothing that the attorney could urge would shake his determination.Mr Moss generally had in a safe in his house a large sum of money in notes and gold. The people who came to borrow from him often preferred money to cheques on bankers, and they would often pay well for change. At that time it happened that he had a thousand sovereigns tied up in canvas bags in his safe, which he had procured for a customer whom he had reason to believe would come to him the next day. So after he had in vain tried to persuade the other to trust him with the diamond, he determined that he would then and there buy him out; and he hoped that the sight of the gold would be more than the other could stand, and that he would be induced to sell very cheap.Mr Moss opened the safe, eyeing his visitor somewhat mistrustfully as he did so.“Well, it happens I can buy the stone from you at once. I happen to have a hundred pounds—it’s a good bit of money to pay for one’s own property, for that diamond is my property; but there, it’s your luck. Now hand it over, and let’s have a look,” Moss said, as he held out his hand for the stone.The little man put the stone down on a piece of white paper on the table. “Hands off, gov’ner,” he said, emphasising his words with a motion with the knife; “put down the pieces alongside, and we will say if it’s a deal.”Moss got out a bag containing a hundred sovereigns, and opening it he put it down on the table.“It ain’t a deal, gov’ner, it wants a lot more than that lot to buy my diamond. Bless yer, Ike Hart told me what it was worth. It’s worth twenty times that to me, and a lot more to a gent like you,” the little man said, but Moss noticed that his eyes glistened at the sight of the gold, and he looked at it hungrily. However, when Moss declared he had no more money, the man put the diamond back in his pocket and made as if he intended to go away. Moss determined that he would get hold of the diamond. What did a hundred pounds more or less matter? that stone was worth a fortune. He determined he would not miss it. If he could only summon up courage to snatch up a revolver that was on the top of his safe, he might get hold of the diamond without paying for it.The little man’s eyes followed his. “Look ’ere, gov’ner, don’t yer try that game on. If yer was to reach, I shall have to stick this into yer, and may be we would be both sorry when it was too late,” he said.Moss knew that he daren’t carry out the little idea that had come into his mind. If he got the diamond he would have to pay for it, so he took down another bag; then he shut up the safe to show that no more money was forthcoming. But it was no good.“Four thousand sovereigns Ike said any of the big illicit buyers would give me for it,” the little man said.Moss began to think that they probably would, and he began to feel afraid that the prize was going to slip away from him. Then he took down another bag, and after that another, and another, until he had offered all the money he had. Then at last the man seemed to be unable to stand the sight of so much money.“Well, it’s cruel to let a stone like this go for that lot; but there, if you’ve no more pieces, and ’olds to your claim to the diamond, anythink for a quiet life. It’s a bargain—lend me something to put the stuff in.” There was a black travelling-bag in the room, and into this the contents of the canvas bags were poured. The cheerful clinking of the sovereigns was anything but grateful music to Mr Moss; it seemed like giving away the money, for if he had only chanced to find the diamond first it would have been his for nothing. His visitor, however, listened as if the sound was a pleasing novelty to him. For all that, as he slouched out with the bag in his hand, he grumbled out something about having thrown away a fortune, and it was enough to make Ike Hart turn in his grave for him to have let the stone go so cheap.When he was left alone Mr Moss thought that under the circumstances he might indulge in the luxury of another cigar, and another glass of Hollands. As he smoked he thought of the wonderful diamond he had bought, and what he could do with it. It was a wonderful stone indeed, he had never seen a bigger, and the colour seemed good enough. A thousand pounds was a good lot of money to venture in a business a man knew so little about as Mess did about diamonds; still he felt very confident that there was a good deal more to be made out of it. The worst of it was that the law would prove a terrible stumbling-block to him. He began to feel quite nervous when he thought that if the police only knew of his having the diamond in his possession, they could seize it, and haul him off to the jail. For the first time he had gone wrong about a diamond, and laid himself open to the very stringent penalties which are imposed upon the unlawful possession of diamonds. He knew that by the ordinance he would be bound to give up to the police the diamond that had been found in his garden. However, he thought he knew a trick worth two of that. After he had smoked for some time a plan came into his head, which, as he thought over it, seemed to be excellent. He invented a history for the diamond that had come into his possession, which would enable him to deal with it boldly and openly. It should make him famous as the man who found the great Moss Diamond. The newspapers should all write about him, and he would show his wonderful gem at Windsor Castle.Then the money that he would sell it for—that was the pleasantest thought of all, and Mr Moss wove all sorts of blissful visions of the future as he looked into the smoke of his cigar.Jobling’s Sell is a not over prosperous digging on the banks of the Vaal River. Who Jobling was, and what his Sell might have been, are now rather matters of legend than history, so long ago do the days seem when the place was first rushed, though, as a matter of fact, it is considerably less than twenty years ago. The story goes that Jobling was a wily speculator in strong drinks, and other necessaries, who, having laid in a stock of brandy and groceries, repaired to the spot afterwards named after him, and managed to promote a rush to it by spreading false news of many diamonds having been found there. It is said that Jobling got into rather hot water for this, and was sentenced by a jury of diggers to be dragged through the river as a punishment for having created a bogus rush. But just at the critical moment when the sentence was going to be executed some one found a diamond. Then several other good diamonds were found, and it turned out that Jobling, whatever his intentions might have been, really had been a great benefactor. It is certainly a matter of history that Jobling’s Sell was a wonderfully paying place in its palmy day, before it was more or less worked out. Old Hawkins, who had wandered all over the world as a gold-digger, but had for some reason or other taken root at Jobling’s, was the only digger who remained on there from the old days.The rest of its population were men who went there for a spell, after having tried other digging on the river, and soon gave it up. Hawkins liked to talk of the big diamonds he had seen found there. Or he would walk along the banks and point out where the big hotel used to be, and where the gambling saloons stood in the days when Jobling’s Sell boasted of all the properties of a prosperous mining camp. Those days were over, and the thirty or so diggers who formed the camp only made enough to live on. One Saturday afternoon a knot of them were collected at the solitary canteen which supplied the wants of Jobling’s Sell. They were not drinking more than was good for them, for money was scarce, and the host, though he swaggered to strangers much about the future in store for ‘Jobling’s,’ did not back up his faith by showing any willingness to score up drinks to its present population.“Say, boys, have you heard about old Mick Hawkins’s luck?” said a big man with a black beard, Jack Austin by name, who was lounging at the bar.“No,—what? Has he found anything big?” asked another man.“Well, he has found a man who is flat enough to give him a ten-pound note for his claim. It is a Kimberley Jew who has made that investment,” answered Austin.“Never met with that sort of Jew, and I have seen a good bit of them in one country or another,” said another man, who was believed to have had a very varied experience of life, before he found himself digging on the banks of the Vaal River.“Well, it’s a solid fact; Hawkins showed me the ten-pound note, and he would be here now spending it, only the new proprietor of that claim of his has promised him five pounds a week to work for him.”“Things are looking up at last, boys,” said the proprietor of the canteen. “I told you they would soon recognise the splendid openings for investment there are down the river. What will you take, boys? Have a drink with me just for luck.”No one refused the offer, though the enthusiasm the landlord expressed was not shared by the others.After they had emptied their glasses, some one suggested that they should go round to Hawkins’s claim, and with that intention they lounged out of the canteen, and strolled along the bank in that direction.“Stop, boys, and watch ’em; why it makes quite a picture. Did you ever see such a fool?” said Austin, holding up his hand and pointing to an opening in the thorn trees and underwood, through which they could get a view of the Hawkins’s claim.The claim was one which had been almost worked out in the days when the place was first rushed. Hawkins, a grizzled old fellow, was seated with a pipe in his mouth, watching two Kaffirs picking away at the side of the claim, filling buckets with the gravel, which another Kaffir was carrying across to the sorting-table, at which the new proprietor of the claim was seated. That person was no other than our old friend, Mr Moses Moss. He was got up as a digger, wearing a red flannel shirt, and a very broad-brimmed hat, and he had put on, though there was no particular use for them, a pair of long boots.“Looks as though he was going to find a diamond every minute; he will tire a bit of the game before long,” Jack Austin said, as he watched the new arrival on the river. “The doctor ordered him an open-air life, so he gave up his practice. He was a lawyer in Kimberley, and down he comes here to dig. Did any one ever hear of such a thing?”“Hullo, by God, what’s his game now? What’s he up to? Blessed if I don’t believe he has found!” another digger said, as to their surprise Moss suddenly threw his hat into the air with a tremendous shout of triumph.“Hullo, mate, what are you up to now? what do yer think you have got hold of?” growled out old Hawkins, as he came up with his pipe in his mouth.“A diamond!—a wopping big diamond! Oh, hurrah! hurrah!” Mr Moss cried, executing a dance of triumph.The other men crowded round Moss, eager to see what he had found.Hawkins looked rather mortified. It was somewhat annoying that a diamond should have been found in his claim the day after he sold it. His expression, however, changed a good deal when the other handed him the diamond.“Say, did you find this just now; it’s a mighty rum thing to find in a claim; why—” Hawkins was grumbling out, when Austin gave him a kick, and motioned to him to keep quiet.“Magnificent diamond, sir; the finest stone that ever has been found. Did ever man see such luck? Here you come down just for a lark, and find a fortune; but there, luck is one of the queerest things out!” Jack Austin said.“Well, Iamlucky, I don’t mind owning it; but there, boys, come and have a drink, every blessed one of you, to celebrate the biggest diamond that ever has been found down the river, which you just saw me find,” Mr Moss said, and the diggers seemed to fall in with his humour willingly enough, following him without any more pressing to the canteen.Jack Austin might have been noticed to wink slightly at the proprietor of the canteen, before the diamond was shown to the latter. His enthusiasm when he saw it was unbounded.“Knocks the Komnoor into a cocked hat. I always said we would show ’em all the way, some day. What’s it to be, sir, champagne—I’ve got a case in stock?” he said, and in a few second she was opening a case, and getting out some bottles.The wine was some which the canteen-keeper had bought at a sale in Kimberley. It was a remnant which had failed to please the not over critical taste of the Fields. He had bought it very cheap, and had kept it by him, knowing that on any extraordinary occasion, when a demand arose for it on the river, its want of quality would not matter. As the wine was being got out, Jack Austin touched the lucky digger on the shoulder.“Beg pardon, sir, but about old Hawkins; what are you going to do for him? It’s a bit hard on him, seeing a stone like this found after he has just sold his claim.”“Hard! bless me no—a bargain is a bargain. I bought the claim for good or bad.”“Well, that’s true enough; but he might make himself a bit nasty about it. You see it’s rather a rum start your finding a stone like that in the ground you were working, and Hawkins might get talking, and people are apt to be a bit uncharitable.”Mr Moss looked a little uncomfortable. The man was right. Hawkins ought to be put into a good temper, and after some little talk he took out a cheque-book and wrote out a cheque for fifty pounds, for Austin had suggested that it would be as well to give it to Hawkins at once, before he began to talk.Hawkins took the cheque, looking very stolid. Soon after he got it he hurried away, and might have been seen tramping across the veldt towards Kimberley, where he changed it.When the glasses were filled, Jack Austin called to the company to drink to the health of Mr Moss, the lucky digger, who had just found the big diamond.“He has just given our friend Hawkins another fifty, on account of the claim in which it was found. So you see he is a generous man, besides being an honest digger, and a jolly good chap,” Jack said.Mr Moss was much struck with the thirstiness of the river-diggers. The news of the find had very quickly travelled down the banks of the Vaal, and men from various other camps looked into the canteen. When they finished the champagne they set to work at the brandy, and then at the square gin, and the Cape smoke. Nothing seemed to come amiss to them. There was one peculiarity in their manners, which somewhat amazed Mr Moss. They had a curious way of bursting into laughter about nothing at all, as far as he could see. They did not show any envy, but to a man were full of a generous wish to drink with the fortunate finder. Their estimate of the value of the diamond was somewhat vague. One said fifty thou, another laughed at the idea of fifty thousand buying it, and seemed to have quite a contempt for such a paltry sum of money; though he would have had to have searched a long time in the pockets of his trousers before he could find sixpence. “A hundred thou, more like, that’s what it’s worth,” he said, pretty confidently.“Nice chap he is, to talk about a hundred thou. I think I have spent about enough money on that lot,” Moss thought to himself. He hated spending money, but still he thought that the more delighted he appeared to be about his find, the more genuine the find would seem to be. When the stock-in-trade of the canteen was just giving out, a man from Kimberley, whom Moss knew, came into the canteen. He was a diamond-buyer, of the name of Jacobs, and Moss rejoiced to think that at last he would be able to get a good opinion as to the value of his find.“Well, Moss, what’s this I hear about your having turned digger, and found all at once? You have wonderful luck; show us the stone,” the new-comer said.“Well, you can have a look at it, though I don’t suppose it is much in your way,” Moss said, as he gave it him.“My eye, it’s a big ’un!” said the diamond-buyer, and then his expression changed. “What on earth is your game?” he asked. “Who are you trying to get at?”“What’s my game? why I want to know how much that is worth. You won’t buy it yourself, I know, because you’re only a small man; but what do you put its price down as?”“Well, about half-a-crown, may be more, may be less; it’s a pretty clever sell too,” was to the astonishment of Moss the answer he received. “Why, Moss, you don’t mean to say any one has been fooling you with this.”“Fooling me! What do you mean? Don’t play any tricks with me, for I can’t stand it. Do you mean to tell me that ain’t a diamond?”“Diamond, of course it ain’t a diamond!—not a real one, that’s to say, it’s a sham ’un. I have never seen one before, but I have heard of ’em before. Joe Aavons, who you know of, got them made for him at home somewhere, and he has sold one or two of ’em at night to illicit diamond-buyers.”The man’s face told Moss that he was in earnest, and a roar of laughter from the diggers confirmed him.“Well, mate, how about the big diamond; is it fifty or a hundred thou, that it’s worth?” Jack Austin said, and the others gave vent to the suppressed merriment of the last few hours in a yell of laughter. It was too bad, Moss thought, to treat him like that, after they had got him to pay for their liquor. It was terrible for him to think of the money he had lost, if his purchase turned out to be worthless.“Yes, that is one of Joe Aavons’ diamonds. I’ll bet little Dick Starks has been working ’em off for Joe, and they say they have made a lot of money out of them.”“Look here, what is Dick Stark like?” Moss asked, rather eagerly.“He is a little chap, with a cast in one eye, and red hair. He is a pretty sharp customer, is Dick.”Moss recognised the description only too well as that of the man whom he had seen find the diamond. Without saying another word he left the canteen. The next day old Hawkins took possession again of his claim; for Mr Moss was never seen more at Jobling’s Sell.The story, however, very soon followed him back to Kimberley, and the circumstances under which he was persuaded to pay a thousand pounds for the diamond became well-known; for Messrs Aavons and Stark, who were much elated at their success, told their particular friends, who repeated the story. Mr Moss never quite got over it; and though he never had any more transactions in diamonds he ceased to boast about his honesty, or even make any allusion to his knowledge of precious stones.

It was a delightfully cool evening, after a hot dusty day on the Diamond Fields, and Mr Moses Moss, attorney-at-law of Kimberley, South Africa, was sitting under the verandah of his house, smoking a cigar, and sipping a cool drink as it was his custom to do before turning in for the night. As he smoked his thoughts turned to his prospects and his position, and on the whole they were of a somewhat cheerful and self-satisfied character. It was only a few years since he had hurried away from England a broken man. He had found the temptations to overstep the boundary which separates sharp from malpractice too much for him, and his conduct had attracted the meddlesome attentions of the Incorporated Law Society, who had made itself very disagreeable indeed to him. The time he had spent on the Diamond Fields, however, had done wonders. He was worth a nice little sum of money; and as an attorney and money-lender he had got together a very lucrative connection.

On the Diamond Fields he had remembered his English experiences. They had taught him the good old maxim, that honesty was the best policy, and this had been the golden rule of his life, which he had always acted upon so far as compatible with the practice of an attorney whose clients happen, as a matter of fact, to be men of somewhat shady characters.

However, he kept always on the windy side of the law, although the temptations to go just a little crooked were very strong. There were at that time many diamonds to be bought, for very reasonable prices, by persons who were content to buy under circumstances which the law punished with great severity. Mr Moss had come to the conclusion, however, that dealing in stolen diamonds was too risky a business to follow. He used to make it his boast that he hardly knew a rough diamond when he saw one, and he said that he never wished to have any dealings in them. Indirectly, of course, he—like every one else on the Diamond Fields—lived by diamonds. His clients as a rule were in what was called the illicit. But he could not help that, he said. Of course he was happy enough to defend any one who had got into trouble for buying stolen diamonds. Then if any one came to him to borrow money it was not his business to ask questions as to what the money was wanted for. The money was generally wanted at once, and gold rather than notes or cheques was in request. But those circumstances did not suggest anything to Mr Moss, or if they did, he kept his thoughts to himself. He was too busy in considering the large percentage he could charge and the security he could get to bother himself about matters that did not concern him. He did not wish to be told anything about what his clients thought of doing with the money they came to him hurriedly to borrow. When on one occasion a man who wanted a hundred pounds in gold at once was indiscreet enough to blurt out something about having a chance to get hold of a ‘big un’ for that sum which was worth ten times the money, Mr Moss was very much hurt at being asked to share any such guilty knowledge. He certainly did not go so far as to refuse to entertain the loan, but he took care to ease his conscience by charging an extra twenty per cent.

Some people said that Mr Moss in a way avenged the claimholders who suffered from the depredations of the illicit diamond-buyers, and that he preyed upon them as they preyed on the mining interest, and there is no doubt a good share of the price of many a stolen diamond got into his clutches. It was characteristic of the sources from which he acquired his money, that the very house in which he lived should have once belonged to one Ike Hart, who in his day had been a very notorious buyer of stolen diamonds, and had flourished wonderfully until he bought one diamond too many, which happened to have been sent him by the police. He had had the advantage of Mr Moss’s professional assistance at his trial and advice about his private affairs. Mr Hart had been convicted, and had been sent to do a sentence of hard labour on the Capetown Breakwater, and Mr Moss had become possessed of his house. Ike Hart was said to have sworn that he would be even with Moss, and to have declared that he had been robbed. However, Mr Moss felt satisfied, as he reviewed his career, that he had never done anything that the law could take hold of. If in one or two cases he had grabbed somewhat greedily at his clients’ property, those clients were out of the way of harming him, and there was not the slightest chance of his being made to disgorge any of the plunder he had got together.

Mr Moss’s house stood back from the road in a good-sized garden—if you could call a place a garden in which nothing grew but a few cacti and a mass of straggling tobacco-trees—which was separated from the road by a high, corrugated-iron fence.

As Mr Moss smoked in his verandah, he began to think that amongst the bushes at the end of the garden he could distinguish a form of a man stooping over the ground. At first he felt nervous; then he became curious, as he made the figure out more clearly. It certainly was the figure of a man, and he seemed to be digging for something. “What was he after? What could he hope to find?” Mr Moss asked himself.

He would find out that for himself, he determined. So he got up, and slinking along very quietly in the shade of the fence, he crept up close to the man who, for reasons best known to himself, had visited his compound at night. The man went on working without noticing him. He was digging into the ground with a broken bit of spade, and seemed to be very intent upon what he was about.

Close to where the man was digging there was a water-barrel, and Mr Moss got behind it, and watched his visitor with considerable interest. When Mr Moss called to mind who the former owner of the premises was, he began to have a suspicion of what his visitor was looking for. He remembered that there had been some talk of Ike Hart’s having several big diamonds hidden away when he was arrested. The man dug for some time, then scratched about with his hands in the hole, then measured from the wall with a tape-measure, and then set to work again. All of a sudden he threw down the spade and picked something up.

Mr Moss’s heart gave a jump when he saw this. The man had picked up a bundle of rag in which something seemed to be wrapped. The stranger unfolded it, and as he did so Mr Moss sprang from behind the water-barrel, and placed his hand on his shoulder.

“Who are you? and what’s that you have found in my garden? Come, drop it, or I will call the police,” Mr Moss said, for the other was an undersized, slight man, and he did not feel very much afraid of him.

“Leave me alone! keep your hands off, or I will make a hole in yer!” the man answered. As he spoke the attorney saw that he had something in his hand which glistened rather nastily in the moonlight.

“Put up that knife, or I will shout out; there is a policeman at the corner of the road, most likely, and they can hear me at the house across the road,” he said.

“Leave me alone, then, and I will clear out. I don’t want to have nothing to do with you,” the man said; and he gave a wriggle away.

“Give me what you have just taken from my garden, then,” said Mr Moss; “it belongs to me—I saw you pick up the—”

“Hush! you fool!” the man said, interrupting him. “Maybe there is a peeler outside in the road, and they would hear that word if they were within half a mile of us.”

“Look here, my man, you don’t think I’m going to let you take away what you have just found—you haven’t got a prospecting licence to look for diamonds in my garden, so just give it up, and I will say nothing about what I caught you at.”

“You bet you won’t, but it happens the diamond is mine. The party who planted it there left it me; that party was poor Ike Hart, who died the other day in Capetown jail, that’s where I’ve just come from. When poor old Ike saw he weren’t going to live to get out, he manages to tell me about this. He was a pal of mine, was Ike, and he thought he’d do me a good turn. I’ve tramped up here from Capetown to get this big ’un.”

“See here, my man,” said Mr Moss, “I don’t want to be hard on you. You say you have a right to the diamond because Ike Hart gave it you—I say it’s mine because it’s in my garden. Suppose we compromise the matter; come into my house, and we will talk it quietly over.”

“I don’t mind going into your house, gov’ner, but keep your hands off me, or you’ll have more than you like,” the little man said, emphasising his remarks with a gesture with the knife, which made the attorney feel uncomfortable.

“Now, gov’ner, what’s yer game? If you won’t speak first, I will. Come, you’ve got into this by seeing what you have seen, and I don’t mind speaking out fair. What do you say to halves?” the man said, after he had sat down in a chair in Mr Moss’s sitting-room. “There’s enough for us both, seems to me. Ike Hart told me he could easily have got eight thou, for it, and he intended to have taken it home if he hadn’t been run in.”

“Eight thousand! You’re talking nonsense. Hart was not such a fool as to think that; but let’s have a look at it,” Mr Moss said, as he got a glance at the stone which the other held in his hand.

“No, you don’t, gov’ner,” the man said, as Mr Moss stretched out his hand for the diamond.

The attorney thought for a minute or two. For a second the idea flashed across his mind that it might be a police trap. He had never bought a diamond illegally before, and the laws against having rough diamonds in your possession unless you could account for them, and were either a licensed dealer or buyer, were very strict. If he kept the diamond in his possession, instead of giving it up to the Crown, he would be committing a criminal offence, for which he would be liable to a severe punishment. He did not believe that the police would try to trap him. Besides, he was impressed with his visitor’s manner, and thought that he seemed to be anxious to keep the diamond. Moss looked at the diamond, and thought that it was the biggest stone he had ever seen, and he began to long to get it into his possession. He did not, as he said, know much about diamonds, but no one could have lived a few months on the Diamond Fields without knowing that such a stone as the one he saw was worth a great deal of money. Ike Hart was probably right; it was likely enough that he could have got eight thousand for it, and that it was really worth much more. As Mr Moss looked at it, a reckless greed came over him, and he determined that he would have it.

“Well, I suppose we needn’t quarrel; your offer is a fair one, we will go halves; and as you know me and I don’t know you, I will have the diamond and will give you your share when I sell it; I dare say I can dispose of it more advantageously than you can,” he said, smiling blandly at his visitor.

“Dare say you can, gov’ner; but I sticks to it till I get the pieces for it,” was the answer. And nothing that the attorney could urge would shake his determination.

Mr Moss generally had in a safe in his house a large sum of money in notes and gold. The people who came to borrow from him often preferred money to cheques on bankers, and they would often pay well for change. At that time it happened that he had a thousand sovereigns tied up in canvas bags in his safe, which he had procured for a customer whom he had reason to believe would come to him the next day. So after he had in vain tried to persuade the other to trust him with the diamond, he determined that he would then and there buy him out; and he hoped that the sight of the gold would be more than the other could stand, and that he would be induced to sell very cheap.

Mr Moss opened the safe, eyeing his visitor somewhat mistrustfully as he did so.

“Well, it happens I can buy the stone from you at once. I happen to have a hundred pounds—it’s a good bit of money to pay for one’s own property, for that diamond is my property; but there, it’s your luck. Now hand it over, and let’s have a look,” Moss said, as he held out his hand for the stone.

The little man put the stone down on a piece of white paper on the table. “Hands off, gov’ner,” he said, emphasising his words with a motion with the knife; “put down the pieces alongside, and we will say if it’s a deal.”

Moss got out a bag containing a hundred sovereigns, and opening it he put it down on the table.

“It ain’t a deal, gov’ner, it wants a lot more than that lot to buy my diamond. Bless yer, Ike Hart told me what it was worth. It’s worth twenty times that to me, and a lot more to a gent like you,” the little man said, but Moss noticed that his eyes glistened at the sight of the gold, and he looked at it hungrily. However, when Moss declared he had no more money, the man put the diamond back in his pocket and made as if he intended to go away. Moss determined that he would get hold of the diamond. What did a hundred pounds more or less matter? that stone was worth a fortune. He determined he would not miss it. If he could only summon up courage to snatch up a revolver that was on the top of his safe, he might get hold of the diamond without paying for it.

The little man’s eyes followed his. “Look ’ere, gov’ner, don’t yer try that game on. If yer was to reach, I shall have to stick this into yer, and may be we would be both sorry when it was too late,” he said.

Moss knew that he daren’t carry out the little idea that had come into his mind. If he got the diamond he would have to pay for it, so he took down another bag; then he shut up the safe to show that no more money was forthcoming. But it was no good.

“Four thousand sovereigns Ike said any of the big illicit buyers would give me for it,” the little man said.

Moss began to think that they probably would, and he began to feel afraid that the prize was going to slip away from him. Then he took down another bag, and after that another, and another, until he had offered all the money he had. Then at last the man seemed to be unable to stand the sight of so much money.

“Well, it’s cruel to let a stone like this go for that lot; but there, if you’ve no more pieces, and ’olds to your claim to the diamond, anythink for a quiet life. It’s a bargain—lend me something to put the stuff in.” There was a black travelling-bag in the room, and into this the contents of the canvas bags were poured. The cheerful clinking of the sovereigns was anything but grateful music to Mr Moss; it seemed like giving away the money, for if he had only chanced to find the diamond first it would have been his for nothing. His visitor, however, listened as if the sound was a pleasing novelty to him. For all that, as he slouched out with the bag in his hand, he grumbled out something about having thrown away a fortune, and it was enough to make Ike Hart turn in his grave for him to have let the stone go so cheap.

When he was left alone Mr Moss thought that under the circumstances he might indulge in the luxury of another cigar, and another glass of Hollands. As he smoked he thought of the wonderful diamond he had bought, and what he could do with it. It was a wonderful stone indeed, he had never seen a bigger, and the colour seemed good enough. A thousand pounds was a good lot of money to venture in a business a man knew so little about as Mess did about diamonds; still he felt very confident that there was a good deal more to be made out of it. The worst of it was that the law would prove a terrible stumbling-block to him. He began to feel quite nervous when he thought that if the police only knew of his having the diamond in his possession, they could seize it, and haul him off to the jail. For the first time he had gone wrong about a diamond, and laid himself open to the very stringent penalties which are imposed upon the unlawful possession of diamonds. He knew that by the ordinance he would be bound to give up to the police the diamond that had been found in his garden. However, he thought he knew a trick worth two of that. After he had smoked for some time a plan came into his head, which, as he thought over it, seemed to be excellent. He invented a history for the diamond that had come into his possession, which would enable him to deal with it boldly and openly. It should make him famous as the man who found the great Moss Diamond. The newspapers should all write about him, and he would show his wonderful gem at Windsor Castle.

Then the money that he would sell it for—that was the pleasantest thought of all, and Mr Moss wove all sorts of blissful visions of the future as he looked into the smoke of his cigar.

Jobling’s Sell is a not over prosperous digging on the banks of the Vaal River. Who Jobling was, and what his Sell might have been, are now rather matters of legend than history, so long ago do the days seem when the place was first rushed, though, as a matter of fact, it is considerably less than twenty years ago. The story goes that Jobling was a wily speculator in strong drinks, and other necessaries, who, having laid in a stock of brandy and groceries, repaired to the spot afterwards named after him, and managed to promote a rush to it by spreading false news of many diamonds having been found there. It is said that Jobling got into rather hot water for this, and was sentenced by a jury of diggers to be dragged through the river as a punishment for having created a bogus rush. But just at the critical moment when the sentence was going to be executed some one found a diamond. Then several other good diamonds were found, and it turned out that Jobling, whatever his intentions might have been, really had been a great benefactor. It is certainly a matter of history that Jobling’s Sell was a wonderfully paying place in its palmy day, before it was more or less worked out. Old Hawkins, who had wandered all over the world as a gold-digger, but had for some reason or other taken root at Jobling’s, was the only digger who remained on there from the old days.

The rest of its population were men who went there for a spell, after having tried other digging on the river, and soon gave it up. Hawkins liked to talk of the big diamonds he had seen found there. Or he would walk along the banks and point out where the big hotel used to be, and where the gambling saloons stood in the days when Jobling’s Sell boasted of all the properties of a prosperous mining camp. Those days were over, and the thirty or so diggers who formed the camp only made enough to live on. One Saturday afternoon a knot of them were collected at the solitary canteen which supplied the wants of Jobling’s Sell. They were not drinking more than was good for them, for money was scarce, and the host, though he swaggered to strangers much about the future in store for ‘Jobling’s,’ did not back up his faith by showing any willingness to score up drinks to its present population.

“Say, boys, have you heard about old Mick Hawkins’s luck?” said a big man with a black beard, Jack Austin by name, who was lounging at the bar.

“No,—what? Has he found anything big?” asked another man.

“Well, he has found a man who is flat enough to give him a ten-pound note for his claim. It is a Kimberley Jew who has made that investment,” answered Austin.

“Never met with that sort of Jew, and I have seen a good bit of them in one country or another,” said another man, who was believed to have had a very varied experience of life, before he found himself digging on the banks of the Vaal River.

“Well, it’s a solid fact; Hawkins showed me the ten-pound note, and he would be here now spending it, only the new proprietor of that claim of his has promised him five pounds a week to work for him.”

“Things are looking up at last, boys,” said the proprietor of the canteen. “I told you they would soon recognise the splendid openings for investment there are down the river. What will you take, boys? Have a drink with me just for luck.”

No one refused the offer, though the enthusiasm the landlord expressed was not shared by the others.

After they had emptied their glasses, some one suggested that they should go round to Hawkins’s claim, and with that intention they lounged out of the canteen, and strolled along the bank in that direction.

“Stop, boys, and watch ’em; why it makes quite a picture. Did you ever see such a fool?” said Austin, holding up his hand and pointing to an opening in the thorn trees and underwood, through which they could get a view of the Hawkins’s claim.

The claim was one which had been almost worked out in the days when the place was first rushed. Hawkins, a grizzled old fellow, was seated with a pipe in his mouth, watching two Kaffirs picking away at the side of the claim, filling buckets with the gravel, which another Kaffir was carrying across to the sorting-table, at which the new proprietor of the claim was seated. That person was no other than our old friend, Mr Moses Moss. He was got up as a digger, wearing a red flannel shirt, and a very broad-brimmed hat, and he had put on, though there was no particular use for them, a pair of long boots.

“Looks as though he was going to find a diamond every minute; he will tire a bit of the game before long,” Jack Austin said, as he watched the new arrival on the river. “The doctor ordered him an open-air life, so he gave up his practice. He was a lawyer in Kimberley, and down he comes here to dig. Did any one ever hear of such a thing?”

“Hullo, by God, what’s his game now? What’s he up to? Blessed if I don’t believe he has found!” another digger said, as to their surprise Moss suddenly threw his hat into the air with a tremendous shout of triumph.

“Hullo, mate, what are you up to now? what do yer think you have got hold of?” growled out old Hawkins, as he came up with his pipe in his mouth.

“A diamond!—a wopping big diamond! Oh, hurrah! hurrah!” Mr Moss cried, executing a dance of triumph.

The other men crowded round Moss, eager to see what he had found.

Hawkins looked rather mortified. It was somewhat annoying that a diamond should have been found in his claim the day after he sold it. His expression, however, changed a good deal when the other handed him the diamond.

“Say, did you find this just now; it’s a mighty rum thing to find in a claim; why—” Hawkins was grumbling out, when Austin gave him a kick, and motioned to him to keep quiet.

“Magnificent diamond, sir; the finest stone that ever has been found. Did ever man see such luck? Here you come down just for a lark, and find a fortune; but there, luck is one of the queerest things out!” Jack Austin said.

“Well, Iamlucky, I don’t mind owning it; but there, boys, come and have a drink, every blessed one of you, to celebrate the biggest diamond that ever has been found down the river, which you just saw me find,” Mr Moss said, and the diggers seemed to fall in with his humour willingly enough, following him without any more pressing to the canteen.

Jack Austin might have been noticed to wink slightly at the proprietor of the canteen, before the diamond was shown to the latter. His enthusiasm when he saw it was unbounded.

“Knocks the Komnoor into a cocked hat. I always said we would show ’em all the way, some day. What’s it to be, sir, champagne—I’ve got a case in stock?” he said, and in a few second she was opening a case, and getting out some bottles.

The wine was some which the canteen-keeper had bought at a sale in Kimberley. It was a remnant which had failed to please the not over critical taste of the Fields. He had bought it very cheap, and had kept it by him, knowing that on any extraordinary occasion, when a demand arose for it on the river, its want of quality would not matter. As the wine was being got out, Jack Austin touched the lucky digger on the shoulder.

“Beg pardon, sir, but about old Hawkins; what are you going to do for him? It’s a bit hard on him, seeing a stone like this found after he has just sold his claim.”

“Hard! bless me no—a bargain is a bargain. I bought the claim for good or bad.”

“Well, that’s true enough; but he might make himself a bit nasty about it. You see it’s rather a rum start your finding a stone like that in the ground you were working, and Hawkins might get talking, and people are apt to be a bit uncharitable.”

Mr Moss looked a little uncomfortable. The man was right. Hawkins ought to be put into a good temper, and after some little talk he took out a cheque-book and wrote out a cheque for fifty pounds, for Austin had suggested that it would be as well to give it to Hawkins at once, before he began to talk.

Hawkins took the cheque, looking very stolid. Soon after he got it he hurried away, and might have been seen tramping across the veldt towards Kimberley, where he changed it.

When the glasses were filled, Jack Austin called to the company to drink to the health of Mr Moss, the lucky digger, who had just found the big diamond.

“He has just given our friend Hawkins another fifty, on account of the claim in which it was found. So you see he is a generous man, besides being an honest digger, and a jolly good chap,” Jack said.

Mr Moss was much struck with the thirstiness of the river-diggers. The news of the find had very quickly travelled down the banks of the Vaal, and men from various other camps looked into the canteen. When they finished the champagne they set to work at the brandy, and then at the square gin, and the Cape smoke. Nothing seemed to come amiss to them. There was one peculiarity in their manners, which somewhat amazed Mr Moss. They had a curious way of bursting into laughter about nothing at all, as far as he could see. They did not show any envy, but to a man were full of a generous wish to drink with the fortunate finder. Their estimate of the value of the diamond was somewhat vague. One said fifty thou, another laughed at the idea of fifty thousand buying it, and seemed to have quite a contempt for such a paltry sum of money; though he would have had to have searched a long time in the pockets of his trousers before he could find sixpence. “A hundred thou, more like, that’s what it’s worth,” he said, pretty confidently.

“Nice chap he is, to talk about a hundred thou. I think I have spent about enough money on that lot,” Moss thought to himself. He hated spending money, but still he thought that the more delighted he appeared to be about his find, the more genuine the find would seem to be. When the stock-in-trade of the canteen was just giving out, a man from Kimberley, whom Moss knew, came into the canteen. He was a diamond-buyer, of the name of Jacobs, and Moss rejoiced to think that at last he would be able to get a good opinion as to the value of his find.

“Well, Moss, what’s this I hear about your having turned digger, and found all at once? You have wonderful luck; show us the stone,” the new-comer said.

“Well, you can have a look at it, though I don’t suppose it is much in your way,” Moss said, as he gave it him.

“My eye, it’s a big ’un!” said the diamond-buyer, and then his expression changed. “What on earth is your game?” he asked. “Who are you trying to get at?”

“What’s my game? why I want to know how much that is worth. You won’t buy it yourself, I know, because you’re only a small man; but what do you put its price down as?”

“Well, about half-a-crown, may be more, may be less; it’s a pretty clever sell too,” was to the astonishment of Moss the answer he received. “Why, Moss, you don’t mean to say any one has been fooling you with this.”

“Fooling me! What do you mean? Don’t play any tricks with me, for I can’t stand it. Do you mean to tell me that ain’t a diamond?”

“Diamond, of course it ain’t a diamond!—not a real one, that’s to say, it’s a sham ’un. I have never seen one before, but I have heard of ’em before. Joe Aavons, who you know of, got them made for him at home somewhere, and he has sold one or two of ’em at night to illicit diamond-buyers.”

The man’s face told Moss that he was in earnest, and a roar of laughter from the diggers confirmed him.

“Well, mate, how about the big diamond; is it fifty or a hundred thou, that it’s worth?” Jack Austin said, and the others gave vent to the suppressed merriment of the last few hours in a yell of laughter. It was too bad, Moss thought, to treat him like that, after they had got him to pay for their liquor. It was terrible for him to think of the money he had lost, if his purchase turned out to be worthless.

“Yes, that is one of Joe Aavons’ diamonds. I’ll bet little Dick Starks has been working ’em off for Joe, and they say they have made a lot of money out of them.”

“Look here, what is Dick Stark like?” Moss asked, rather eagerly.

“He is a little chap, with a cast in one eye, and red hair. He is a pretty sharp customer, is Dick.”

Moss recognised the description only too well as that of the man whom he had seen find the diamond. Without saying another word he left the canteen. The next day old Hawkins took possession again of his claim; for Mr Moss was never seen more at Jobling’s Sell.

The story, however, very soon followed him back to Kimberley, and the circumstances under which he was persuaded to pay a thousand pounds for the diamond became well-known; for Messrs Aavons and Stark, who were much elated at their success, told their particular friends, who repeated the story. Mr Moss never quite got over it; and though he never had any more transactions in diamonds he ceased to boast about his honesty, or even make any allusion to his knowledge of precious stones.

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