Story 6.

Story 6.A Dear Lesson.Some years ago every one on the Diamond Fields had heard of Mr Smythe’s parcel of diamonds. Buyers, brokers, and diggers were constantly talking of that wonderful collection of gems. No one had ever seen it, and some persons refused to believe in it. Smythe would not be such a fool, they said, as to keep a lot of money locked up in diamonds. But those who knew most about Smythe believed in his diamonds; in fact, some men knew of stones which he had added to his collection. In this case rumour had exaggerated wonderfully little; for, as a matter of fact, Mr Smythe’s parcel existed, and was little less valuable than it was reported to be. For some years the price of diamonds had been low, and Smythe had determined to hold; but he did not keep ordinary stuff, only picked stones of extraordinary quality. Whenever he bought a parcel, he would select any perfect stone there might be in it, and ship the rest. It was his opinion that diamonds would go up, and that he would realise a great profit when he brought his wonderful parcel home. In the mean time he could afford to be out of his money; for he was a fairly prosperous man, as he had some claims in the mine that brought him in a good deal, and had done very well diamond buying and digging. Though Mr Smythe was a very good man of business, he was in his private life by no means free from little weaknesses, and they were not all of them amiable ones. It was harmless, if not commendable, for him to be very careful of his get-up and appearance, and to dress with as much care on the South African Diamond Fields as he would have done in Pall Mall. No one would have any right to blame him for dyeing his twisted moustache black, and making a very game struggle against the ravages of time; nor did he hurt any one by his habit of continually bragging and boasting of the position he held and the people he knew ‘at home’—for this is a weakness common to many worthy and respectable dwellers in the distant parts of our empire. But he had one failing which was rather mischievous: although he was by no means a young man—for he was nearer fifty than forty—he was as vain as a girl, or rather as a vain man, and he was convinced that he was so attractive and fascinating that the other sex found him irresistible. He loved to pose in the character of a Don Juan, and though his past successes were his favourite topic of conversation, he took care to let it be known that, if he cared, he could continue these little histories up to the present time. In fact, he had gained the reputation of being a man very dangerous to the domestic peace of his neighbours, and he took no little pride and pleasure in having such a reputation, and was careful to maintain it, even sometimes by rather unjustly damaging the fair fame of some of the ladies who had the privilege of his friendship.It was his custom every year to vary the monotony of Diamond-Field life by making a little visit to the coast; and, from the hints and suggestions he would give when he came back, it would seem that when on his travels he was always on the watch for an opportunity to get up the flirtations he delighted in carrying on. It was on one of those trips that he became acquainted with Captain and Mrs Hamilton. Captain Hamilton was supposed to have lately sold out of the army, and, from what he said, he seemed to be possessed of a nice little capital, which he hoped to double in some colonial venture. He didn’t care what he went in for—farming, diamond-mining, gold-digging. He didn’t care much what it was, so long as it paid. Soldiering, he said, was a bad game for a married man, and he intended to double his capital before he went home; for England was no country for a man to live in who had not some thousands a year. Mr Smythe did not at first take very kindly to the Captain, who seemed a dullish, heavy sort of man, and cared to talk about very little besides betting and sport. But Mrs Hamilton quite made up for any defects in her husband. She was an extremely pretty young woman, so young-looking that she might have been hardly out of her teens, with a half-mischievous, half-demure manner, which our friend found very fascinating; and it is needless to say that he came to the conclusion that she had fallen in love with him; for it was his idiosyncrasy to believe that he was irresistible with all women. Certainly she was a woman whom any man might fall in love with—a brown-haired, blue-eyed little thing, with a delightfully neat little figure, and always becomingly dressed. “Begad, she’s a devilish nice little woman! I must persuade them to come up to Kimberley. Hamilton would do well there, though he’s a stupid oaf a fellow,” said Mr Smythe to himself, as he gave his moustache a twist, looking at himself in the glass, and putting on a Mephistophelean grin on which he prided himself. Accordingly he suggested it to Hamilton that he had better make his home on the Diamond Fields, as it was the best place for a man of energy and capital. Captain Hamilton at once fell into the trap which this artful schemer had laid for him. “Dare say it was as good a place to go to as any other,” said he. It seemed to him it was a beastly country; while Mrs Hamilton was so enthusiastic in persuading her husband, and so anxious to go to the Fields, that Mr Smythe put the most flattering inference on her support.So it came about that Captain and Mrs Hamilton were Mr Smythe’s fellow-passengers from Capetown to the Diamond Fields, and, more or less under his auspices, settled amongst the queer community who toil for wealth in that land of dust and diamonds. They took one of those little iron houses in one of the principal streets in Kimberley, in which at that time the most prosperous citizens sweltered in the summer and shivered in the winter. From their first arrival, we all took a good deal of interest in the Hamiltons. It was never Mr Smythe’s habit to be over-careful not to compromise the ladies he admired; and there was from the first a little scandal about Mrs Hamilton, and a good many stories told about her. Captain Hamilton became a very interesting person, when the fact that he was possessed of some little capital which he wished to invest was well-known, and a good many plans were made for his safely investing it. There was little Mo Abrahams, who came up to him, and told him how a few thousands would turn the Victory Mine, lately known as Fools Rush, into one of the grandest mining properties in the world; and the Captain seemed to be much struck with the advantages of the speculation, and thanked Mo for giving him such a chance; but he did not settle to go in for it at once, though he freely admitted that, in Mo’s words, nothing could be fairer between man and man than the terms suggested. “We must have another talk over it,” he said; and Mo went off rejoicing. After Mo went away, Bill Bowker, that fine specimen of the rugged honest digger and pioneer of the Fields, came up to the Captain, and, with much bad language, which it was his rugged honest custom to use, asked him what that little Jew wanted. “Excuse me, sir,” he said, “but he be going to let you in with that swindling mine of his. The place was salted before they washed up; and I know where they first got the diamonds they found there. I don’t like to see a gentleman like you let in. Now, what you want to go in for is digging in a established mine, not for a wild-cat speculation;” and the rugged honest one went on to urge upon the Captain the advantage of investing his money in some claims that were in that portion of the Du Toits Pan Mine, which had somehow gained the name of the graveyard, on account of so many persons having buried their fortunes there. Captain Hamilton was very much obliged to his kind friend, though he said that he refused to believe that Mo was notbonâ fide; “over sanguine, perhaps, but means well,” he said; “still, I think that what you mention would just suit me. We must have another talk about it.” Thus the Captain for some time did not settle how he would embark his fortune, but treated with every one who came to him, almost always entertaining the highest opinion of the suggestions made to him. In the mean time, the owners of valuable mining properties were constant in paying him the greatest attention, and he was asked to share so many small bottles of champagne that the bar-keepers looked upon him as a perfect godsend, and dated the revival of prosperity on the Fields from his arrival. As the Captain had a good deal of spare time on his hands, he was able to indulge in some of the pastimes in which he excelled. After some little time he was recognised as a very fine billiard-player. At first there were one or two young men who thought they could beat him, and it was a costly mistake for them; but the Captain explained he was only just getting back his form, and so accounted for the great improvement which could be noticed in his play, after he had got a little money on. At cards he was very lucky: a fortunate whist-player, a good écarté-player, while he had wonderfully good luck, when several times he was persuaded, protesting that it was not at all in his line, to sit down to a game of poker. However, though his card and billiard playing did not lighten his purse, they compelled him to neglect his wife more than was wise, perhaps. Night after night, while Hamilton was at the club, the dangerous Mr Smythe would be sitting smoking cigarettes in Jenny Hamilton’s little sitting-room.Perhaps, though people did talk a good deal, there was not much harm in it; and Jenny Hamilton, though she did look so young, was, perhaps, pretty well able to take care of herself. Still, she became far more confidential with her friend Mr Smythe than it was wise for a young woman to be with such a very fascinating man. Certainly, when she told him all her grievances against her husband—how he neglected her, and was always at billiards or cards, leaving her all by herself, how he drank too much, and was generally rather a disappointment—she was taking a course which seemed rather indiscreet. But it was not only about her own affairs she would talk; she took the greatest interest in all he had to say about himself, and would listen to his stories of English society with never-failing interest. She would encourage him to read poetry to her, for, though his education had been rather commercial than classical, he fancied that he could read well. “Ah,” she would say, “how nice it is to be fond of poetry and art! Now, Jack cares for nothing but billiards, cards, sport, and drink; not even for me, I am afraid.” Then she would change the conversation, and talk about Smythe’s affairs. “Was it true,” she would ask, “that he had such a splendid collection of diamonds? She was so fond of seeing them. Couldn’t he show them to her?” Smythe made rather a favour of this, for he said that no one had ever seen his diamonds! still, of course, he would show them to Mrs Hamilton, only she must come down to the office to see them. Mrs Hamilton didn’t altogether like that; she would sooner he brought the diamonds up to the house. However, she said she was determined to see them, and she would constantly return to this subject. On one occasion, when Mr Smythe called, he found Hamilton at home instead of at the club, and so he did the next time after that; and, rather to his annoyance, he found the Captain had taken to stop at home. He used usually to sit in the verandah, smoking, paying very little heed to his wife or her friend. Still, Mr Smythe found him a good deal in the way, and began to look upon his presence in his own house as little less than an intrusion.“Doyou know that Jack is fearfully jealous of you?” said pretty Mrs Hamilton to him one evening. “Some one has said something to him, and since then he has never left me out of his sight.”“That’s very stupid of him!” said Mr Smythe.“Yes, it is very silly,” she said; “but I’m afraid you’re a dreadful man! Anyhow, Jack thinks you are, for he has taken to stop at home all day looking after me.”“When is he going to get something to do? If he had more work and less drink he wouldn’t take fancies into his head.”“I don’t know,” she answered. “I’m afraid he will go away to some other place. Won’t that be wretched?” she said.“Wretched, my dear! of course it will,” said Mr Smythe; and he would have said a good deal more, only the smoke of his cigarette made Jenny choke; and then her husband came into the room, scowled at his guest, helped himself to some whiskey, and left it again.“By the by,” said Jenny, when he had gone, “I’ve never seen those diamonds: now, you know, you promised I should.”“You must come to the office and see them,” he said. “I don’t like to bring them up here, unless he’s out, for I don’t like any one to see them but you.”“Yes, I know that it’s a great privilege for me to see them, though I don’t know what harm it can do for a poor little woman like me to see diamonds she can’t hope ever to have; you must bring them up here, and show them to me when he’s out of the room.”“No, I can’t do that; he is always in and out. You must come to the office.”“You wretch,” she said, “you want me to go to your office by myself, but I won’t; it wouldn’t do at all. Besides, do you know, he never lets me out of his sight for a minute; he hardly ever sleeps for long, and he gets so fearfully violent, I think it’s the whiskey he takes. Do you know, the other day I thought he would strike me.”Mr Smythe was a good deal impressed with this information, and he looked with no little awe at the culprit, who fidgeted in and out of the room with no particular object. Though he despised the man, he felt a good deal afraid of him. “By Jove,” he thought to himself, “suppose he took a fancy to go for me—the brute looks pretty strong!”“If I was you,” he said, “I’d give him a strong sleeping draught; he is a misery to himself and every one else, like this.”“I only wish I could,” she said. “He gets more nervous and cross every evening; but he won’t take anything.”“Well, I’d make him; I’d put a dose into his whiskey-and-water, which would send him off fast enough. I’d tell you what to give.”For one second Jenny seemed to be thinking the matter over. Then she answered,—“Oh, I wish you would; I would—I’d do it to-morrow; and then you could bring up the diamonds to show me, and we should be alone. Now, write down the stuff I am to get.”Mr Smythe knew a little about doctoring, so he wrote out the quantities of a drug on a leaf of his note-book, and gave it her.“Now promise to bring up the diamonds to-morrow, and we will look at them when we are alone and he is asleep.”“All right,” he said; “but I don’t think they will interest you, and I hardly like bringing them out; but I can’t refuse you anything, my dear.”Just then Captain Hamilton came in again, and, as he seemed inclined to stay, Mr Smythe took leave of his host and hostess, the latter giving him a look which seemed to say “Don’t forget.”“By gad, she is a plucky little woman, and dead gone on me! Why, I believe, if I told her to, she’d put a drop of prussic acid in his whiskey!” said Mr Smythe to himself, as he swaggered down to the club from Hamilton’s house.That evening he was in very great force, and his anecdotes and epigrams were unusually brilliant. Every one understood the point of what he said, and knew to whom his hints referred; and his toadies told him that he was a bad lot, a very bad lot, for they knew that this sort of reproach was the most grateful flattery to him. “What an insufferable cad that little brute is! hope he comes to grief soon,” was the remark of one man who probably didn’t like him.The next evening Mr Smythe opened his safe, and took out his parcel of diamonds. After all there was no danger in taking them as far as the Hamiltons’ house, though they were so valuable, for the Hamiltons lived in one of the principal streets in the town. It was rather a silly whim of the little woman, he thought, being so set on seeing the diamonds; but he knew enough of the sex to be aware that she was determined to have it granted. The diamonds were in a large snuff-box. There were about a hundred diamonds weighing from ten to fifty carats each, and they were worth about 20,000 pounds. Something seemed to prompt him to put the diamonds back into the safe; but on the Diamond Fields men get used to the idea of carrying about stones of great value; and then he thought of Jenny Hamilton’s bewitching little face, so he put the diamonds in his pocket, and started off for her house. The house stood in what was called a garden, though very little grew there. On either side it was only a few yards from the house next door. As Smythe walked up to the door Jenny Hamilton came out to meet him.“Hush!” she said, holding her hand up to her mouth; “he is asleep! I’ve given it him; I put it into the whiskey-bottle, and he took it all.”She beckoned him to follow, and they both went indoors into the sitting-room. From the next room they could hear the heavy breathing of the Captain.“Now, have you brought them?” she said.“Yes; I’ve done what you told me to do,” he answered. “Let me show you them.”“Stop,” she said first; “let me see if he is fast asleep.” She went into the next room and came back again. “He’s fast asleep, poor old boy,” she said.Smythe thought that he never had seen her look so pretty. She was dressed very prettily; had a very brilliant colour on her cheeks, which became her; and her eyes glittered with excitement. They sat down, and he poured the diamonds out of the box on to a sheet of white paper, which looked grey contrasted with some of them.“And these diamonds are worth twenty thousand pounds! How good to bring them!”Smythe thought that he never had seen such a pretty little face as hers was, as she looked at the diamonds with a longing glance; but he was rather surprised when she looked up into his face and said, “Give them to me.” Of course he had no intention of doing any such thing; the idea was simply absurd, considering their value. And Smythe didn’t half like this eccentricity of his pretty little friend; still she looked so pretty that Smythe could not feel angry with her. Her face was close to his—she was looking up at him; he stooped down and kissed her. Just then he heard a step behind him, and as he turned round, his head struck against something hard: it was the muzzle of a revolver, which Hamilton was holding. Hamilton was wide awake, and there was a very ugly grin of triumph in his face.“Well, you’re a nice young man, you are, to drop in friendly of an evening! Hush! don’t speak out loud, or I’ll blow your brains out at once,” said the Captain.Jenny Hamilton didn’t seem to be one bit disconcerted. She had snatched up the diamonds, and she was turning them over, watching their sheen with evident pleasure. Mr Smythe, however, felt anything but at his ease. The situation was a very strange one, for if he shouted out “Murder!” he would be heard by his neighbours on both sides, who were only separated from him by a few feet of open space and a few inches of tin wall. One of them was a young diamond-buyer, with a taste for comic singing, who had just returned from a trip home, and was entertaining his friends with the cream of the melody of the London music-halls, and as he stood shivering with fear, with the revolver held up to his head, Smythe could hear the chorus of one of the songs of the day. He had never cared less about comic singing. But though help was so near he felt completely in the power of Hamilton, who looked very resolute and reckless, and seemed to be quite in earnest.Personal courage never was Mr Smythe’s strong point, and now for a minute he felt too startled to think; in fact, he only had sufficient sense left to make him restrain his inclination to shout out for help. After a second or two he began to feel more assured. It seemed so unlikely that he should be murdered in the middle of the town, within calling distance of several men; only the revolver was real enough. When a man is holding a revolver up to your head, you have the worst of the position. He mayn’t care to shoot; but, on the other hard, he may; and, whatever the ultimate consequences may be to him, the immediate consequences to you are sure.In a half-hearted way for one second Smythe thought of resisting, and he made a movement with his hand towards his pocket.“Keep your hands up; you’d better,” said the other.Smythe obeyed him, and sat holding his hand above his head, looking very ridiculous.“You’d better take that from him, Jen,” said Hamilton; and Jenny Hamilton put her hand into her dear friend’s pocket and deftly eased him of his revolver. A gleam of hope came into Mr Smythe’s heart. After all, he thought, people don’t commit homicide without reason; and he saw that he had not to deal with an outraged husband, but with a pair of sharpers. He certainly began to wish that his diamonds were in his safe at home; but he knew they were difficult property to deal with, and hoped to get off without making any great sacrifice.“What the devil do you mean by this, Captain Hamilton?” he said, trying to put on an air of unconcern he didn’t feel. “Surely it’s a poor joke to steal into your own drawing-room, and hold a revolver up to the head of a man you find calling on your wife.”“I don’t set up for being a good joker,” said the Captain; “but my jokes are eminently practical, as you’d learn if the police of London, New York, and ’Frisco told you what they know of Jack Hamilton.”“Well, you’d better say what you hope to make out of this,” said Mr Smythe.“I intend,” said the Captain, “to make a job for the crowner’s inquest of you, and those diamonds for myself.”“Don’t talk nonsense, man; you won’t frighten me, I’m not so easily fooled. Why, if I don’t turn up, a dozen men will know where to look for me; besides that, they will hear you shoot next door. Why, if you shoot, you’d be hung.”“You’ve no call to bother your head about me. I can play this hand without your advice,” said the Captain. “See here: first I shoot you; then Jen puts the diamonds away; then I give myself up to the police; Jen confesses; I take my trial, like a man, and show that I shot you because I found you here alone with my wife, after you’d got her to drug my liquor. See here: the whiskey-bottle in the next room is drugged. Jen has got the paper you wrote out. The chemist she got the stuff from can be found, and you’ve taken care to let every one know what your game is. What do you think a jury would do to me? You’d have to look a long time before you’d get one who would find me guilty of murder. Hung! why, I shall be looked upon as the vindicator of the sanctity of domestic life. Guess they’d get up a testimonial for me.”Then Mr Smythe realised the awkward position in which he was placed. The man seemed to be in earnest, and there was a determined look in his cruel hard face which made Smythe believe that he dared do what he said; and if he did, it was true that he would be in very little danger of being punished. Smythe could remember a somewhat similar case, in which a jury had endorsed the popular verdict of “Served him right,” by finding a prisoner, who had killed the man who had wronged him, not guilty.He could hear the words of the song which were being sung next door, and he knew that if he shouted out murder he could summon help, but he daren’t shout out. Help was near, but the revolver was nearer.“Stop,” he said, catching at a last straw; “you don’t know that some one can’t prove I had the diamonds with me!”“I’ll chance that,” said Hamilton. “You see, no one has ever seen the diamonds but us.”As Hamilton said this Jenny left the room with the diamonds in her hand, and then came back again without them. Smythe felt that he had seen the last of the stones, which were likely to cost him so dear.“Spare me! for Heaven’s sake, spare me! What have I done that you should kill me? Keep the diamonds, and let me go.”“That won’t do, I am afraid,” said Hamilton; “you might change your mind, and try and get the diamonds back. Of course I don’t want to shoot you, but it’s the way to play my game.”Then Mrs Hamilton, who had come back into the room, spoke for the first time.“What’s the good of all this talk, Jack? Make haste and get it all over.”Just then, in his extremity, an idea came into Smythe’s mind, and again he began to hope.“Stop,” he said. “Why kill me? I have money in the bank. Spare me, and I will write a cheque for five hundred.”“It’s risky for me,” said Captain Hamilton. “Still, a little ready comes in handy. I will take a thou.”With a very shaky hand Smythe wrote out the cheque for the amount asked for, the Captain still holding the revolver up to his head. Smythe handed over the cheque.“Now I can go, I suppose?” he said, making for the door.“Not yet,” said the other. “Get the paper, Jen. Now write out a note to me, enclosing the cheque for a card debt,” he added, as his wife took down some paper and placed it before their guest. Smythe wrote the letter he required.“That will do. Now write to Jen, sending her the diamonds.”“What am I to say?” said Smythe.“What are you to say? Why, you don’t want me to write a love-letter to my own wife—it’s more in your line than mine; but make it pretty sweet, for I don’t know but that the old plan isn’t best after all.”Smythe had written love-letters to other men’s wives before, but never under similar circumstances, with the husband witnessing the performance with a loaded revolver in his hand, nor had he ever made such a very expensive present. It was some time before he could pull himself together sufficiently to write, and one or two attempts were condemned by his severe critic, who said,—“No, that sort of slush ain’t good enough. Put a little more sugar in it. Why, damn it, man, I thought you were so good at it!”At last the right sort of note was written. “That will do. Here, what do you think of it, Jen?” said the Captain, passing the note across to his partner.“Why, I think it a dear little note; it’s a beautiful note; the prettiest note I ever got. What a darling man you are to give me such a present, and yet what a wicked wretch you are to write like that to me!” and Mrs Hamilton looked at her correspondent, who was regarding her with no very loving glance, and then burst into a peal of silvery laughter.The Captain seemed to take up the joke. “Why, hang it, man,” he said, “but you’re a generous big-hearted fellow. There are some men who wouldn’t care about their wives taking presents from such a gay cuss as you, but I know you mean no harm, old fellow;” and the Captain gave him a slap on the back with his unoccupied hand, which made him start with terror. “No,” he continued, as his visitor made as if he was going, “you sha’n’t go yet. Stop and drink, stop and drink,” he repeated, with a warning gesture with his revolver.Mr Smythe sat down at this pressing invitation, and took one or two glasses of brandy-and-water. He felt that his nerve was altogether gone, and that he was obliged to obey the other. At last Hamilton let him go, and opening the door for him, took a noisy leave of him, that the neighbours must have heard; and then he lurched home in such a state of brandy and shock that he could hardly realise his loss before he tumbled into bed.The next morning he did not wake up until it was late, past ten o’clock, and then he, by degrees, remembered the events of the night before. “Was it a dream?” he thought; and he went to his safe, and found out that it was no dream—the diamonds were not there! What could he do to get his diamonds back? was his first thought. He could think of nothing, for he remembered the letters he had written, and already it was too late to stop the cheque, for he knew it would have been presented as soon as the bank opened. Then he began to think that the best thing he could do would be to keep his sorrows to himself, for no one would believe his story; and the people who lived next door to the Hamiltons would have heard Captain Hamilton let him out of his house, and would never believe that anything of the sort had happened to him that evening. So Mr Smythe did nothing, and he was not surprised that evening to hear that among the passengers by the coach to Capetown were his friends the Hamiltons.He never saw them again, nor did he wish to. They were last seen, some time ago, in Paris. Hamilton was the same stolid, heavy-dragoon looking man, and Jenny Hamilton was as young and charming-looking as ever; and they seemed to be very prosperous, so they probably did well with Smythe’s diamonds.

Some years ago every one on the Diamond Fields had heard of Mr Smythe’s parcel of diamonds. Buyers, brokers, and diggers were constantly talking of that wonderful collection of gems. No one had ever seen it, and some persons refused to believe in it. Smythe would not be such a fool, they said, as to keep a lot of money locked up in diamonds. But those who knew most about Smythe believed in his diamonds; in fact, some men knew of stones which he had added to his collection. In this case rumour had exaggerated wonderfully little; for, as a matter of fact, Mr Smythe’s parcel existed, and was little less valuable than it was reported to be. For some years the price of diamonds had been low, and Smythe had determined to hold; but he did not keep ordinary stuff, only picked stones of extraordinary quality. Whenever he bought a parcel, he would select any perfect stone there might be in it, and ship the rest. It was his opinion that diamonds would go up, and that he would realise a great profit when he brought his wonderful parcel home. In the mean time he could afford to be out of his money; for he was a fairly prosperous man, as he had some claims in the mine that brought him in a good deal, and had done very well diamond buying and digging. Though Mr Smythe was a very good man of business, he was in his private life by no means free from little weaknesses, and they were not all of them amiable ones. It was harmless, if not commendable, for him to be very careful of his get-up and appearance, and to dress with as much care on the South African Diamond Fields as he would have done in Pall Mall. No one would have any right to blame him for dyeing his twisted moustache black, and making a very game struggle against the ravages of time; nor did he hurt any one by his habit of continually bragging and boasting of the position he held and the people he knew ‘at home’—for this is a weakness common to many worthy and respectable dwellers in the distant parts of our empire. But he had one failing which was rather mischievous: although he was by no means a young man—for he was nearer fifty than forty—he was as vain as a girl, or rather as a vain man, and he was convinced that he was so attractive and fascinating that the other sex found him irresistible. He loved to pose in the character of a Don Juan, and though his past successes were his favourite topic of conversation, he took care to let it be known that, if he cared, he could continue these little histories up to the present time. In fact, he had gained the reputation of being a man very dangerous to the domestic peace of his neighbours, and he took no little pride and pleasure in having such a reputation, and was careful to maintain it, even sometimes by rather unjustly damaging the fair fame of some of the ladies who had the privilege of his friendship.

It was his custom every year to vary the monotony of Diamond-Field life by making a little visit to the coast; and, from the hints and suggestions he would give when he came back, it would seem that when on his travels he was always on the watch for an opportunity to get up the flirtations he delighted in carrying on. It was on one of those trips that he became acquainted with Captain and Mrs Hamilton. Captain Hamilton was supposed to have lately sold out of the army, and, from what he said, he seemed to be possessed of a nice little capital, which he hoped to double in some colonial venture. He didn’t care what he went in for—farming, diamond-mining, gold-digging. He didn’t care much what it was, so long as it paid. Soldiering, he said, was a bad game for a married man, and he intended to double his capital before he went home; for England was no country for a man to live in who had not some thousands a year. Mr Smythe did not at first take very kindly to the Captain, who seemed a dullish, heavy sort of man, and cared to talk about very little besides betting and sport. But Mrs Hamilton quite made up for any defects in her husband. She was an extremely pretty young woman, so young-looking that she might have been hardly out of her teens, with a half-mischievous, half-demure manner, which our friend found very fascinating; and it is needless to say that he came to the conclusion that she had fallen in love with him; for it was his idiosyncrasy to believe that he was irresistible with all women. Certainly she was a woman whom any man might fall in love with—a brown-haired, blue-eyed little thing, with a delightfully neat little figure, and always becomingly dressed. “Begad, she’s a devilish nice little woman! I must persuade them to come up to Kimberley. Hamilton would do well there, though he’s a stupid oaf a fellow,” said Mr Smythe to himself, as he gave his moustache a twist, looking at himself in the glass, and putting on a Mephistophelean grin on which he prided himself. Accordingly he suggested it to Hamilton that he had better make his home on the Diamond Fields, as it was the best place for a man of energy and capital. Captain Hamilton at once fell into the trap which this artful schemer had laid for him. “Dare say it was as good a place to go to as any other,” said he. It seemed to him it was a beastly country; while Mrs Hamilton was so enthusiastic in persuading her husband, and so anxious to go to the Fields, that Mr Smythe put the most flattering inference on her support.

So it came about that Captain and Mrs Hamilton were Mr Smythe’s fellow-passengers from Capetown to the Diamond Fields, and, more or less under his auspices, settled amongst the queer community who toil for wealth in that land of dust and diamonds. They took one of those little iron houses in one of the principal streets in Kimberley, in which at that time the most prosperous citizens sweltered in the summer and shivered in the winter. From their first arrival, we all took a good deal of interest in the Hamiltons. It was never Mr Smythe’s habit to be over-careful not to compromise the ladies he admired; and there was from the first a little scandal about Mrs Hamilton, and a good many stories told about her. Captain Hamilton became a very interesting person, when the fact that he was possessed of some little capital which he wished to invest was well-known, and a good many plans were made for his safely investing it. There was little Mo Abrahams, who came up to him, and told him how a few thousands would turn the Victory Mine, lately known as Fools Rush, into one of the grandest mining properties in the world; and the Captain seemed to be much struck with the advantages of the speculation, and thanked Mo for giving him such a chance; but he did not settle to go in for it at once, though he freely admitted that, in Mo’s words, nothing could be fairer between man and man than the terms suggested. “We must have another talk over it,” he said; and Mo went off rejoicing. After Mo went away, Bill Bowker, that fine specimen of the rugged honest digger and pioneer of the Fields, came up to the Captain, and, with much bad language, which it was his rugged honest custom to use, asked him what that little Jew wanted. “Excuse me, sir,” he said, “but he be going to let you in with that swindling mine of his. The place was salted before they washed up; and I know where they first got the diamonds they found there. I don’t like to see a gentleman like you let in. Now, what you want to go in for is digging in a established mine, not for a wild-cat speculation;” and the rugged honest one went on to urge upon the Captain the advantage of investing his money in some claims that were in that portion of the Du Toits Pan Mine, which had somehow gained the name of the graveyard, on account of so many persons having buried their fortunes there. Captain Hamilton was very much obliged to his kind friend, though he said that he refused to believe that Mo was notbonâ fide; “over sanguine, perhaps, but means well,” he said; “still, I think that what you mention would just suit me. We must have another talk about it.” Thus the Captain for some time did not settle how he would embark his fortune, but treated with every one who came to him, almost always entertaining the highest opinion of the suggestions made to him. In the mean time, the owners of valuable mining properties were constant in paying him the greatest attention, and he was asked to share so many small bottles of champagne that the bar-keepers looked upon him as a perfect godsend, and dated the revival of prosperity on the Fields from his arrival. As the Captain had a good deal of spare time on his hands, he was able to indulge in some of the pastimes in which he excelled. After some little time he was recognised as a very fine billiard-player. At first there were one or two young men who thought they could beat him, and it was a costly mistake for them; but the Captain explained he was only just getting back his form, and so accounted for the great improvement which could be noticed in his play, after he had got a little money on. At cards he was very lucky: a fortunate whist-player, a good écarté-player, while he had wonderfully good luck, when several times he was persuaded, protesting that it was not at all in his line, to sit down to a game of poker. However, though his card and billiard playing did not lighten his purse, they compelled him to neglect his wife more than was wise, perhaps. Night after night, while Hamilton was at the club, the dangerous Mr Smythe would be sitting smoking cigarettes in Jenny Hamilton’s little sitting-room.

Perhaps, though people did talk a good deal, there was not much harm in it; and Jenny Hamilton, though she did look so young, was, perhaps, pretty well able to take care of herself. Still, she became far more confidential with her friend Mr Smythe than it was wise for a young woman to be with such a very fascinating man. Certainly, when she told him all her grievances against her husband—how he neglected her, and was always at billiards or cards, leaving her all by herself, how he drank too much, and was generally rather a disappointment—she was taking a course which seemed rather indiscreet. But it was not only about her own affairs she would talk; she took the greatest interest in all he had to say about himself, and would listen to his stories of English society with never-failing interest. She would encourage him to read poetry to her, for, though his education had been rather commercial than classical, he fancied that he could read well. “Ah,” she would say, “how nice it is to be fond of poetry and art! Now, Jack cares for nothing but billiards, cards, sport, and drink; not even for me, I am afraid.” Then she would change the conversation, and talk about Smythe’s affairs. “Was it true,” she would ask, “that he had such a splendid collection of diamonds? She was so fond of seeing them. Couldn’t he show them to her?” Smythe made rather a favour of this, for he said that no one had ever seen his diamonds! still, of course, he would show them to Mrs Hamilton, only she must come down to the office to see them. Mrs Hamilton didn’t altogether like that; she would sooner he brought the diamonds up to the house. However, she said she was determined to see them, and she would constantly return to this subject. On one occasion, when Mr Smythe called, he found Hamilton at home instead of at the club, and so he did the next time after that; and, rather to his annoyance, he found the Captain had taken to stop at home. He used usually to sit in the verandah, smoking, paying very little heed to his wife or her friend. Still, Mr Smythe found him a good deal in the way, and began to look upon his presence in his own house as little less than an intrusion.

“Doyou know that Jack is fearfully jealous of you?” said pretty Mrs Hamilton to him one evening. “Some one has said something to him, and since then he has never left me out of his sight.”

“That’s very stupid of him!” said Mr Smythe.

“Yes, it is very silly,” she said; “but I’m afraid you’re a dreadful man! Anyhow, Jack thinks you are, for he has taken to stop at home all day looking after me.”

“When is he going to get something to do? If he had more work and less drink he wouldn’t take fancies into his head.”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “I’m afraid he will go away to some other place. Won’t that be wretched?” she said.

“Wretched, my dear! of course it will,” said Mr Smythe; and he would have said a good deal more, only the smoke of his cigarette made Jenny choke; and then her husband came into the room, scowled at his guest, helped himself to some whiskey, and left it again.

“By the by,” said Jenny, when he had gone, “I’ve never seen those diamonds: now, you know, you promised I should.”

“You must come to the office and see them,” he said. “I don’t like to bring them up here, unless he’s out, for I don’t like any one to see them but you.”

“Yes, I know that it’s a great privilege for me to see them, though I don’t know what harm it can do for a poor little woman like me to see diamonds she can’t hope ever to have; you must bring them up here, and show them to me when he’s out of the room.”

“No, I can’t do that; he is always in and out. You must come to the office.”

“You wretch,” she said, “you want me to go to your office by myself, but I won’t; it wouldn’t do at all. Besides, do you know, he never lets me out of his sight for a minute; he hardly ever sleeps for long, and he gets so fearfully violent, I think it’s the whiskey he takes. Do you know, the other day I thought he would strike me.”

Mr Smythe was a good deal impressed with this information, and he looked with no little awe at the culprit, who fidgeted in and out of the room with no particular object. Though he despised the man, he felt a good deal afraid of him. “By Jove,” he thought to himself, “suppose he took a fancy to go for me—the brute looks pretty strong!”

“If I was you,” he said, “I’d give him a strong sleeping draught; he is a misery to himself and every one else, like this.”

“I only wish I could,” she said. “He gets more nervous and cross every evening; but he won’t take anything.”

“Well, I’d make him; I’d put a dose into his whiskey-and-water, which would send him off fast enough. I’d tell you what to give.”

For one second Jenny seemed to be thinking the matter over. Then she answered,—

“Oh, I wish you would; I would—I’d do it to-morrow; and then you could bring up the diamonds to show me, and we should be alone. Now, write down the stuff I am to get.”

Mr Smythe knew a little about doctoring, so he wrote out the quantities of a drug on a leaf of his note-book, and gave it her.

“Now promise to bring up the diamonds to-morrow, and we will look at them when we are alone and he is asleep.”

“All right,” he said; “but I don’t think they will interest you, and I hardly like bringing them out; but I can’t refuse you anything, my dear.”

Just then Captain Hamilton came in again, and, as he seemed inclined to stay, Mr Smythe took leave of his host and hostess, the latter giving him a look which seemed to say “Don’t forget.”

“By gad, she is a plucky little woman, and dead gone on me! Why, I believe, if I told her to, she’d put a drop of prussic acid in his whiskey!” said Mr Smythe to himself, as he swaggered down to the club from Hamilton’s house.

That evening he was in very great force, and his anecdotes and epigrams were unusually brilliant. Every one understood the point of what he said, and knew to whom his hints referred; and his toadies told him that he was a bad lot, a very bad lot, for they knew that this sort of reproach was the most grateful flattery to him. “What an insufferable cad that little brute is! hope he comes to grief soon,” was the remark of one man who probably didn’t like him.

The next evening Mr Smythe opened his safe, and took out his parcel of diamonds. After all there was no danger in taking them as far as the Hamiltons’ house, though they were so valuable, for the Hamiltons lived in one of the principal streets in the town. It was rather a silly whim of the little woman, he thought, being so set on seeing the diamonds; but he knew enough of the sex to be aware that she was determined to have it granted. The diamonds were in a large snuff-box. There were about a hundred diamonds weighing from ten to fifty carats each, and they were worth about 20,000 pounds. Something seemed to prompt him to put the diamonds back into the safe; but on the Diamond Fields men get used to the idea of carrying about stones of great value; and then he thought of Jenny Hamilton’s bewitching little face, so he put the diamonds in his pocket, and started off for her house. The house stood in what was called a garden, though very little grew there. On either side it was only a few yards from the house next door. As Smythe walked up to the door Jenny Hamilton came out to meet him.

“Hush!” she said, holding her hand up to her mouth; “he is asleep! I’ve given it him; I put it into the whiskey-bottle, and he took it all.”

She beckoned him to follow, and they both went indoors into the sitting-room. From the next room they could hear the heavy breathing of the Captain.

“Now, have you brought them?” she said.

“Yes; I’ve done what you told me to do,” he answered. “Let me show you them.”

“Stop,” she said first; “let me see if he is fast asleep.” She went into the next room and came back again. “He’s fast asleep, poor old boy,” she said.

Smythe thought that he never had seen her look so pretty. She was dressed very prettily; had a very brilliant colour on her cheeks, which became her; and her eyes glittered with excitement. They sat down, and he poured the diamonds out of the box on to a sheet of white paper, which looked grey contrasted with some of them.

“And these diamonds are worth twenty thousand pounds! How good to bring them!”

Smythe thought that he never had seen such a pretty little face as hers was, as she looked at the diamonds with a longing glance; but he was rather surprised when she looked up into his face and said, “Give them to me.” Of course he had no intention of doing any such thing; the idea was simply absurd, considering their value. And Smythe didn’t half like this eccentricity of his pretty little friend; still she looked so pretty that Smythe could not feel angry with her. Her face was close to his—she was looking up at him; he stooped down and kissed her. Just then he heard a step behind him, and as he turned round, his head struck against something hard: it was the muzzle of a revolver, which Hamilton was holding. Hamilton was wide awake, and there was a very ugly grin of triumph in his face.

“Well, you’re a nice young man, you are, to drop in friendly of an evening! Hush! don’t speak out loud, or I’ll blow your brains out at once,” said the Captain.

Jenny Hamilton didn’t seem to be one bit disconcerted. She had snatched up the diamonds, and she was turning them over, watching their sheen with evident pleasure. Mr Smythe, however, felt anything but at his ease. The situation was a very strange one, for if he shouted out “Murder!” he would be heard by his neighbours on both sides, who were only separated from him by a few feet of open space and a few inches of tin wall. One of them was a young diamond-buyer, with a taste for comic singing, who had just returned from a trip home, and was entertaining his friends with the cream of the melody of the London music-halls, and as he stood shivering with fear, with the revolver held up to his head, Smythe could hear the chorus of one of the songs of the day. He had never cared less about comic singing. But though help was so near he felt completely in the power of Hamilton, who looked very resolute and reckless, and seemed to be quite in earnest.

Personal courage never was Mr Smythe’s strong point, and now for a minute he felt too startled to think; in fact, he only had sufficient sense left to make him restrain his inclination to shout out for help. After a second or two he began to feel more assured. It seemed so unlikely that he should be murdered in the middle of the town, within calling distance of several men; only the revolver was real enough. When a man is holding a revolver up to your head, you have the worst of the position. He mayn’t care to shoot; but, on the other hard, he may; and, whatever the ultimate consequences may be to him, the immediate consequences to you are sure.

In a half-hearted way for one second Smythe thought of resisting, and he made a movement with his hand towards his pocket.

“Keep your hands up; you’d better,” said the other.

Smythe obeyed him, and sat holding his hand above his head, looking very ridiculous.

“You’d better take that from him, Jen,” said Hamilton; and Jenny Hamilton put her hand into her dear friend’s pocket and deftly eased him of his revolver. A gleam of hope came into Mr Smythe’s heart. After all, he thought, people don’t commit homicide without reason; and he saw that he had not to deal with an outraged husband, but with a pair of sharpers. He certainly began to wish that his diamonds were in his safe at home; but he knew they were difficult property to deal with, and hoped to get off without making any great sacrifice.

“What the devil do you mean by this, Captain Hamilton?” he said, trying to put on an air of unconcern he didn’t feel. “Surely it’s a poor joke to steal into your own drawing-room, and hold a revolver up to the head of a man you find calling on your wife.”

“I don’t set up for being a good joker,” said the Captain; “but my jokes are eminently practical, as you’d learn if the police of London, New York, and ’Frisco told you what they know of Jack Hamilton.”

“Well, you’d better say what you hope to make out of this,” said Mr Smythe.

“I intend,” said the Captain, “to make a job for the crowner’s inquest of you, and those diamonds for myself.”

“Don’t talk nonsense, man; you won’t frighten me, I’m not so easily fooled. Why, if I don’t turn up, a dozen men will know where to look for me; besides that, they will hear you shoot next door. Why, if you shoot, you’d be hung.”

“You’ve no call to bother your head about me. I can play this hand without your advice,” said the Captain. “See here: first I shoot you; then Jen puts the diamonds away; then I give myself up to the police; Jen confesses; I take my trial, like a man, and show that I shot you because I found you here alone with my wife, after you’d got her to drug my liquor. See here: the whiskey-bottle in the next room is drugged. Jen has got the paper you wrote out. The chemist she got the stuff from can be found, and you’ve taken care to let every one know what your game is. What do you think a jury would do to me? You’d have to look a long time before you’d get one who would find me guilty of murder. Hung! why, I shall be looked upon as the vindicator of the sanctity of domestic life. Guess they’d get up a testimonial for me.”

Then Mr Smythe realised the awkward position in which he was placed. The man seemed to be in earnest, and there was a determined look in his cruel hard face which made Smythe believe that he dared do what he said; and if he did, it was true that he would be in very little danger of being punished. Smythe could remember a somewhat similar case, in which a jury had endorsed the popular verdict of “Served him right,” by finding a prisoner, who had killed the man who had wronged him, not guilty.

He could hear the words of the song which were being sung next door, and he knew that if he shouted out murder he could summon help, but he daren’t shout out. Help was near, but the revolver was nearer.

“Stop,” he said, catching at a last straw; “you don’t know that some one can’t prove I had the diamonds with me!”

“I’ll chance that,” said Hamilton. “You see, no one has ever seen the diamonds but us.”

As Hamilton said this Jenny left the room with the diamonds in her hand, and then came back again without them. Smythe felt that he had seen the last of the stones, which were likely to cost him so dear.

“Spare me! for Heaven’s sake, spare me! What have I done that you should kill me? Keep the diamonds, and let me go.”

“That won’t do, I am afraid,” said Hamilton; “you might change your mind, and try and get the diamonds back. Of course I don’t want to shoot you, but it’s the way to play my game.”

Then Mrs Hamilton, who had come back into the room, spoke for the first time.

“What’s the good of all this talk, Jack? Make haste and get it all over.”

Just then, in his extremity, an idea came into Smythe’s mind, and again he began to hope.

“Stop,” he said. “Why kill me? I have money in the bank. Spare me, and I will write a cheque for five hundred.”

“It’s risky for me,” said Captain Hamilton. “Still, a little ready comes in handy. I will take a thou.”

With a very shaky hand Smythe wrote out the cheque for the amount asked for, the Captain still holding the revolver up to his head. Smythe handed over the cheque.

“Now I can go, I suppose?” he said, making for the door.

“Not yet,” said the other. “Get the paper, Jen. Now write out a note to me, enclosing the cheque for a card debt,” he added, as his wife took down some paper and placed it before their guest. Smythe wrote the letter he required.

“That will do. Now write to Jen, sending her the diamonds.”

“What am I to say?” said Smythe.

“What are you to say? Why, you don’t want me to write a love-letter to my own wife—it’s more in your line than mine; but make it pretty sweet, for I don’t know but that the old plan isn’t best after all.”

Smythe had written love-letters to other men’s wives before, but never under similar circumstances, with the husband witnessing the performance with a loaded revolver in his hand, nor had he ever made such a very expensive present. It was some time before he could pull himself together sufficiently to write, and one or two attempts were condemned by his severe critic, who said,—

“No, that sort of slush ain’t good enough. Put a little more sugar in it. Why, damn it, man, I thought you were so good at it!”

At last the right sort of note was written. “That will do. Here, what do you think of it, Jen?” said the Captain, passing the note across to his partner.

“Why, I think it a dear little note; it’s a beautiful note; the prettiest note I ever got. What a darling man you are to give me such a present, and yet what a wicked wretch you are to write like that to me!” and Mrs Hamilton looked at her correspondent, who was regarding her with no very loving glance, and then burst into a peal of silvery laughter.

The Captain seemed to take up the joke. “Why, hang it, man,” he said, “but you’re a generous big-hearted fellow. There are some men who wouldn’t care about their wives taking presents from such a gay cuss as you, but I know you mean no harm, old fellow;” and the Captain gave him a slap on the back with his unoccupied hand, which made him start with terror. “No,” he continued, as his visitor made as if he was going, “you sha’n’t go yet. Stop and drink, stop and drink,” he repeated, with a warning gesture with his revolver.

Mr Smythe sat down at this pressing invitation, and took one or two glasses of brandy-and-water. He felt that his nerve was altogether gone, and that he was obliged to obey the other. At last Hamilton let him go, and opening the door for him, took a noisy leave of him, that the neighbours must have heard; and then he lurched home in such a state of brandy and shock that he could hardly realise his loss before he tumbled into bed.

The next morning he did not wake up until it was late, past ten o’clock, and then he, by degrees, remembered the events of the night before. “Was it a dream?” he thought; and he went to his safe, and found out that it was no dream—the diamonds were not there! What could he do to get his diamonds back? was his first thought. He could think of nothing, for he remembered the letters he had written, and already it was too late to stop the cheque, for he knew it would have been presented as soon as the bank opened. Then he began to think that the best thing he could do would be to keep his sorrows to himself, for no one would believe his story; and the people who lived next door to the Hamiltons would have heard Captain Hamilton let him out of his house, and would never believe that anything of the sort had happened to him that evening. So Mr Smythe did nothing, and he was not surprised that evening to hear that among the passengers by the coach to Capetown were his friends the Hamiltons.

He never saw them again, nor did he wish to. They were last seen, some time ago, in Paris. Hamilton was the same stolid, heavy-dragoon looking man, and Jenny Hamilton was as young and charming-looking as ever; and they seemed to be very prosperous, so they probably did well with Smythe’s diamonds.

Story 7.A Vaal River Heiress.Part One.The General, as he had been called since diamond-digging first broke out on the banks of the Vaal River, inhabited a hut built of rough stones and thatched with reeds near the river-bank at Red Shirt Rush.He was the owner of some claims, and he had worked at Red Shirt since he came up to the Vaal from the colony to try his luck as a diamond-digger; and when other diggers went hither and thither to new places on the river, or were attracted by the rich diggings which afterwards became famous as the South African diamond mines, the old General worked on at Red Shirt as if he were quite satisfied with the rewards that fortune thought fit to bestow upon his labours there, and would laugh at the men who were attracted elsewhere by glowing reports. He could hardly be said to be contented with Red Shirt—certainly if he were he expressed his content peculiarly, for he seldom talked of the place without an uncomplimentary epithet; but he probably was imbued with the gambler’s belief in the doctrine of chances, and hoped his luck would change, while he was too discontented with the results of every move he had made in his life to care to make any more. He was generally supposed to be the unluckiest man down the river, and his bad luck was a very favourite subject for discussion and exaggeration at the canteens and places where diggers congregated.His former history, and the reasons which led him to take to diamond-digging, were subjects which afforded scope for imaginations which found life down the river, when finds were few and far between, barren of topics of interest; and certainly his appearance and manners seemed to show that he was much out of place in the community he found himself in. He was an aristocratic, reserved man, from whom years of rough life had not taken the unmistakable stamp of the military officer.It was generally believed down the river that the General’s relations at home were very great people, and he was looked upon as a man with a history. Luney White, the Vaal River poet, whose contribution to the Diamond Field newspapers caused quite a furore down the river, many bets being made, and much fighting and drinking being occasioned, by the difficult question of what they were all about, and what he meant by them at all, retailed, on the pretence of having heard it from an army officer at Capetown, a story that the General had allowed the suspicion of a terrible murder to rest upon him so as to shield the really guilty person, a lady of exalted rank, and was, at present, a fugitive from justice in consequence of his noble conduct. Luney’s story rather took for a day or two, until some one remembered having read just such a tale in a book the poet had borrowed from him—a circumstance which threw doubts, not only upon the veracity of the story, but on the originality of their poet’s genius, which, up to then, they had believed in. The General’s real name was hardly known, and he was never spoken of by it, though it was to be seen on a tombstone in the Barkly Cemetery, which was put up to the memory of Constance, wife of John Stanby, of Red Shirt Rush, Vaal River. He was the father of a golden-haired little girl of seventeen, who had grown up from a child on the banks of the Vaal. His story had not really been a romantic or remarkable one. Like many another man of good old family but no money he had gone into the army. After serving for some dozen years he had got into the clutches of the Jews by backing a bill for a brother officer. For some years he fought against his debts, but in the end he was obliged to surrender his commission to his enemies, and leave the service. Then, when his affairs were sufficiently hopeless, he fell in love with and married a girl who had not a penny, and, after having tried in vain to get something to do in England, went out to the Cape and was attracted up to Vaal River when diamonds were first found. Though he was under fifty, he had become a grizzled, old-looking man, broken in spirits by persistent misfortune; and yet he was a strange mixture, for at times he was as sanguine as when he first put a pick into the soil of South Africa.Those who said that he never found exaggerated his ill-success, though not perhaps his ill-luck; at long intervals a few ill-looking, off-coloured little diamonds had turned up on his sorting-table, which, if they were to be considered as a recompense for all his weary work, were Fortune’s insults added to her injuries; but nevertheless kept up in him a curious sort of hope, which through all his bad luck he retained, notwithstanding his bitter grumbling against South Africa in particular, and all things in general. To himself constantly, and to others when he met any one he cared to speak to, he would inveigh bitterly against his luck. First of all he would wish that he had never gone into the army; then he would curse the fate which had made him choose the particular branch of the service he had gone into; then he would curse the day he had left the service; and then he would collect every malediction he had made use of and every other he knew, and fire one withering sulphurous volley at fate, which had made him a digger on the Vaal River. These explosions would seem to do him much good, for after one of them he would generally seem much relieved, and as likely as not in a few minutes would be talking about what he would do when he found, as he felt sure he would find when he had got the top stuff off his claim, or got into the lime layer which he would strike in another ten feet, or started into the new ground he was going to work in a month or two.There were two diggers at Red Shirt with whom the General was on intimate terms—Charlie Langdale and Jim Heap. The former was a light-hearted, cheery youngster of about twenty-two, in many respects a typical river-digger. He was restless and unable to take kindly to any work which entailed obedience; had a rare gift for getting into any mischief that was going on, while he possessed very little reverence for his seniors and those who thought themselves his betters; on the other hand, he was superior to many colonial youths in that he did not lie as a rule, nor boast overmuch, and could speak a few sentences without swearing hideously. The first time the General had seen him he was holding his own against a big Irish digger who was trying to bully him out of a claim he was working; and the nonchalant way in which he laughed at the Irishman’s threats, and put the right value on them, impressed the General so much in his favour that he at once struck up an intimacy, and the two became great allies.The other, Jim Heap, was an old Australian digger who had settled at Red Shirt, where he had become a fixture; for besides having some claims, he had become the proprietor of a store, which his wife looked after for him.He was a favourite confidant of the General, who would explain to him his theories about diamonds, and show him why he felt certain he would soon find and be able to leave the country—theories which Jim Heap would listen to gravely enough, though he did not believe in them one bit; but, as he would say to Charlie, what was the good of putting a damper on the old man’s hopes? His life was bad enough as it was, but would be unbearable if he did not go on hoping that he would soon make his pile, and be able to take his little girl home to England. Sometimes, however, he would offer him advice, which the old General—who, though he considered diamond-digging a hateful occupation into which he had been forced by a malignant fate, believed himself to be as good an authority as any one on the subject—would greatly resent. Charlie Langdale also would sometimes venture on the same subject, and one morning, as he sat after dinner smoking under the trees near the General’s house, he had greatly aroused his old friend’s anger by criticising his way of working.“What! say my drive is dangerous!” the General had burst out, after he had listened to Charlie for some time, “and I shan’t get anything in that ground I am driving into! I should like to know what you mean by talking to me about it. Why, if I don’t know something about river digging, I’d like to know who does. I have been digging since they first found diamonds in this cursed country, and have stuck to the river all the time, and never left it for the New Rush when all the others did. A lot I have got for it so far. Well, it’s a long lane that has got no turning; and there is Connie, perhaps she wouldn’t be as well as she is if we had left the river and gone to Kimberley,” he added.“By Jove, yes, you’re right, it’s healthier here than at Kimberley, and she couldn’t look better than she does, could she?” Charlie answered, with a flush of admiration coming across his bright young face, as he looked round and saw a golden-haired, blue-eyed girl, whose bright beauty was unharmed by the pitiless South African sun and climate, which often enough makes sad havoc of a woman’s looks.The sight of Connie, however, made Charlie go back to his subject, regardless of the General’s wrath. “I don’t like the look of that drive, don’t like those boulders that are above you; why don’t you leave it alone and go into fresh ground? I think it dangerous, so does Jim Heap; he told Connie that you ought not to work in it; and she is wretched about it every time you go to the claim.”“It seems to me that every one thinks they can interfere with me—you and Connie, and then Jim Heap, who thinks no one understands anything about digging but himself;” and the General drew in his breath to prepare for a burst of eloquence anent Jim Heap, when his daughter came up, and, feeling that he couldn’t do justice to the subject in her presence, he went into the house choking with indignation.“I wish some one could persuade him to give up that work. But it’s no use, he thinks he is a greater authority about digging than any one else,” Connie said, guessing from her father’s suppressed indignation that Charlie had been broaching the question of the dangerous state of his claim.“Yes, I wish he would go into fresh ground. I never believed in those claims of his, they’re too near the river.”“You will never get him to do that. You know that years ago he saw a big diamond found in the claim next to where he is, which looked, he said, as if it were chipped off a much bigger one, and he is as sure in his own mind as he is of anything that the other bit is somewhere about near where he is working.”“Well, I dare say the claim is safe enough, and I hope he will come across the big ’un, which is going to make his fortune,” said Charlie, who was always ready to look at the bright side of things. “It was only the other day he was saying that it was about time he found, as you were growing too old to be living at Red Shirt.”“Poor old dear, he is always troubling himself about me, and says I am growing up a perfect savage, without any accomplishments and very little education, and shall have terribly hard work to make up for lost time when I get home. Well, I’ll back myself to cook, set a line for fish, nurse any one who’s down with fever, and sort for diamonds, against any one on the river; these are accomplishments enough for Red Shirt, and that’s where I shall be all my life, so far as I can see. He was talking the other day about sending me home, and staying out here himself; but that’s absurd, isn’t it?”Charlie did not answer. The idea of Red Shirt Rush without Connie was miserable enough, for all his good sense told him that the General was right. Connie ought not to be growing up in a digger’s camp, with little education that was not of a very practical character.“Why don’t you say that I couldn’t be improved, Charlie? You’re not half polite. I suspect you’re comparing me with some of those fine ladies you have met at Kimberley. Come, I bet I know about as much out of books as they do, for I have read all the old man has, and they are a good mixed lot. Besides, if I want educating ever so much, how could I go home and leave him by himself? He is wretched enough as it is, and I couldn’t bear to leave him—besides, I don’t want to say good-bye to all my old friends.”Charlie’s heart gave rather a jump—he wondered whether he were one of the friends she would most mind saying good-bye to. He didn’t believe much in the General’s sanguine expectations being realised, and thought that Connie was likely to stand in need some day of a stronger protector than her father; and her words gave him a feeling of hope, and he determined that he would speak out. Just then, however, the General’s voice was heard calling for Connie, and the interruption disconcerted Charlie, who turned off a sentence he was beginning and determined to put it off for another day. His heart failed him, and he thought that the old General would not like it, and that Connie might take it amiss; so knocking the ashes out of his pipe he said good-bye to Connie, and walked up the bank to where he was working, although he longed to stay and talk to her, and there was not the slightest reason why he should not have done so. On his way to his claim he passed the ground where the General was working. It was a claim which had been partly worked in the old days, before the New Rush, as the Kimberley mine was then called, was found, and had been deserted before it had been worked out.After its former owners had abandoned it and had gone to try their luck at the new diggings, the General had worked it down to the bed rock, some thirty feet deep, and was driving into the side of the claim towards the ground where he had seen the diamond found. Charlie stood for a moment or two watching him at work.The drive certainly did not look very safe; the old man was working near a mass of rock which jutted out over him. The ground into which he was driving was the only part of the adjoining claim that had not been worked out, its former owners having thrown their stones and rubbish there, and so had been unable to get at it easily when they had worked out the rest of the claim. The weight on the natural surface of the ground made the place where the General was driving into look all the more awkward.“I say, that’s rather a nasty-looking boulder you are working under, isn’t it? It would flatten out any one in the drive pretty well if it were to slip,” Charlie shouted out to the General, who had crawled out of his drive for a minute.“Slip! Bosh! Suppose the moon were to slip. Nothing but dynamite would move that boulder! Perhaps you would like to teach me how to work the claim,” the elder digger growled out in response; and then he crawled into the tunnel, and Charlie went on, knowing that it was useless to remonstrate any more, and hoping that it would be all right.“Well, youngster, you’ve come back to work at last; you’re a pretty sort of partner! Been down at the General’s? You’re always loafing down there—it makes me laugh to see how that little bit of a girl fools you,” a big dissipated-looking man, who was lying on the ground smoking a pipe, said as Charlie came up to the claim.This was his partner, Bill Jeffson, and as he heard his voice Charlie thought to himself that one of the first steps he would take towards turning over a new leaf would be to break with Mr Bill, so he answered him rather shortly, and told him that he had better mind his own business.“That’s it, quarrel with an old chum, I suppose. I ain’t good enough for you now you’ve got to know the old General. I don’t know what’s come over you: you can’t take a joke, you never go on the spree, and you put on no end of frills just because you know that poverty-stricken old dead-beat and his daughter,” Jeffson growled out as he got up, stretched himself, and lounged into the claim, while Charlie settled down at the sorting-table.Several hours had passed without anything happening to vary the dull monotony of the work, when Charlie suddenly sprang up with an exclamation of surprise.“Hullo! what’s up? Have you found one?” Jeffson called out.“Found one! no. I heard some one cry out; there it is again. It’s from the General’s claim,” said Charlie, as he started to run, leaving his partner, who was never over much interested in other people’s affairs, to lounge after him.After Charlie had gone a little way, he met Connie, who, with a white startled face, was running towards him, crying loudly for help.“Go back and get picks and a crowbar. You have one. It’s father; he has had an accident; the ground has come down. I will go and bring some other men,” she gasped out; and then she ran past him towards the claims where Jim Heap and some other diggers were working.The first glance Charlie got of the claim to which he ran, after he had shouted to his partner to bring the Kaffirs with their tools, told him what had happened.Jim Heap’s prophecy turned out to be true! The drive had fallen, and it was blocked up by a mass of boulders and earth. Of the poor old General nothing could be seen; but it was not hard to guess where he was, and Charlie began to dig madly with his hands into the fallen earth and throw some of the loose stones on one side, a cold sweat running down his face as he realised the terrible fate that had come to his old friend. He had not been at his work long before better help arrived.Jeffson with the Kaffirs set to work with their shovels; and Jim Heap, who at once took in the situation, and, giving the others directions, set to work at the fallen ground, looking up as he did so at Connie, who, having followed him back, stood watching them.“Don’t take on, my dear. I have seen men come out all right from worse places than this, and be none the worse for it,” he said to her; but his tone was not quite as hopeful as his words.She did not answer him, but watched them, speechless and tearless, with an awful look of misery on her white set face. She had not long to wait in suspense. After the work had gone on for some time, she heard a murmur from the men, which told her there was little ground for hope. The boulder under which he had been working had shifted, and her father was lying with the life crushed out of him underneath it. They tried to get her away before they moved the boulder and dragged out the lifeless body, but she would not go, and stood watching them, and followed the men who carried it back into the house without saying a word or even shedding a tear.“Poor girl! it’s a terrible bad business for her. I’ll send my missis to her; she will sit up with her and try and comfort her—not that any one can do her much good, poor little lass,” the old digger said, with something like a tear running down his weather-beaten old face. And then he went to his tent to send his wife, a Devonshire-born woman, whose kindly nature had not been hardened by years of rough life on Australian and South African diggings, to share poor Connie’s sad watch.On the following day the poor old General was buried at Barkly, and there was not much work done at Red Shirt Rush, for most of the diggers followed their old comrade, whom they liked and respected for all his crotchety temper and reserved manner, to his last resting-place. For years there had not been so many men from the river camps in that sleepy little township. It was remarked that the great majority of them left Barkly quite sober, and that there were not more than three fights and no general disturbance. This exemplary conduct was caused partly by a sense of the sadness of the poor old General’s death, and more by the memory of poor little Connie’s piteous face as she stood by the side of the grave. When the funeral was over, Connie, who, in the first shock of her sorrow, had thought nothing about herself, began to realise how friendless and homeless she was.Jim Heap had borrowed a cart and a pair of horses, and driven her and his wife over to Barkly, and on the way back he somehow guessed what she was thinking about.“Maybe, Miss Connie, there are some of your relations at home you ought to write to about this; but until you hear you must stay with us, if you don’t mind living with plain people in a rough place that ain’t fit for a lady like you. While we’ve a roof over our heads, you need not trouble about finding a home. You know, miss, how proud we should be to have you with us; the missis and me have talked that over already.”“How kind you are to me! I don’t want to leave Red Shirt Rush; all my friends are there, and every one seems so kind to me; but I shall be a burden to you. I must try and get my own living somehow,” poor Connie answered.“Burden to us? Don’t talk of that; why, you talk as if you haven’t got anything of your own; why, there’s those claims which are worth a good bit of money maybe, and there is a heap of stuff the General got out of it which hasn’t been sorted yet.”Connie remembered how now and then in her father’s lifetime Jim Heap had expressed a very different opinion about the value of the ground which had cost her so much, but she did not say any more.Another person who thought about Connie’s future was Charlie Langdale. There is no need to say how he would have planned it, and the day after the poor old General was buried—it was a Sunday morning—he was strolling along the river-bank thinking over his plans for the future. He would give up the river, he thought, and go to Kimberley and try and get a sub-managership or something of the sort from one of the companies which would give him a fixed income. Regular work and wages up to that time had had very little attraction to him. He liked working on his own account down the river with no one to order him about, and the gambling uncertainty of river-digging was just suited to his happy-go-lucky disposition; but he thought that he would not mind how irksome the work he got to do was, so long as it would give him a prospect of marrying Connie. If she would only give him just a glimpse of a hope he would ask for no more, till he had shown what sort of stuff he was made of, he declared to himself as he tried to weigh his chance, and went from the depths of despair to hopefulness and back, as he tried to recall the occasions on which he might possibly have shown her how much he cared for her. He had walked along the bank thinking over this question until he had come to the old General’s claims, and, looking at the trees by the little house, he thought of the last time he had stood under them talking to her, and had almost made up his mind to tell her. Well, he would have to wait a bit now. Poor girl, it would not do to talk to her till she had got over the first of her sorrow. Then he walked into the claim, and stood near where the accident had happened, and as he thought he scratched with a stick he had in his hand amongst the loose gravel which the party working to rescue the General had thrown out. By chance he looked down at his feet, and found himself hitting with his stick at something that looked very different from the other pebbles. He was too intent on his thoughts to pay much heed to it, though in an absent way he was looking at it. Suddenly he gave a start, and picked it up; it was a big white diamond!Part Two.The diamond was just such a stone as the poor old General used to describe when he talked of the one he expected to come across—such a stone as he argued that the one he saw in the next claim years before had been chipped. The old man’s theory was rubbish, Charlie had always believed, but there, sure enough, was a diamond that bore it out. It must have been dislodged from the ground that had fallen, and when he met his death the General was very near the prize he had somehow always expected to find. Charlie examined the diamond carefully; he had never seen so large a stone of the same quality before. He could not estimate its value, but it was worth a good many thousands, he believed, for it would probably be one of the finest stones in the world.“Hullo! what have you got there? Show me. Put it in your pocket and hurry away from this place; remember we’re partners, old man; come, look slippy, we don’t want any one to see us mouching about here,” Charlie heard a voice say in his ear, and looking round, he saw his partner, Bill Jeffson, who was staring with big eyes at the diamond, and in his amazement at seeing it had dropped a bottle of ‘Cape smoke’ on the ground without even using one word of bad language.“What do you mean? What’s our partnership got to do with this diamond? it’s not found in our claim.”“That’s it, you darned fool! It’s got to be found in our claim; that’s the only place you can find a diamond in legally if one wants to stick to it.”“Stick to it. Why, this belongs to the General, and I am going to give it up to Jim Heap.”“Stop, you ain’t going to give that diamond up to Jim Heap! You’re mad! Stop! Man alive, how can the diamond belong to any one except the first man who finds it? These claims are abandoned.”Charlie paid no heed to the other, who was trembling with excitement and greed, but pushed past him and walked in the direction of Jim Heap’s house.Bill Jeffson stood for some seconds watching him, thinking what he could say or do to get some share in the diamond he had seen; then he ran after him, and caught hold of him by the arm.“Look here, Charlie—now don’t get riled with an old chum. Look here, now let me put it to you—ain’t you making a mistake? Why don’t you stick to the diamond? You say it belongs to the old General’s girl. Well, you’re sweet on her, and want to marry her, so it won’t hurt her if you do stick to it; she’ll get her share, and it will be all one to her; while if you give it up see where are you—why, you lose the diamond and her too. You don’t suppose that she would marry you if she had a fortune of her own, and that diamond means a fortune, mind you. She is a lady by birth, mind, and has relations in England who are as fine people as any in the land, so I’ve heard; and though they won’t put themselves out about her now—she would only be a trouble to ’em—it would be a different story if she were a bit of an heiress. Why, every one would cry shame, and say you were standing in the girl’s light and preventing her taking her proper place. Now, look here, you say you found that diamond in our claim—you and I can settle about my share—and then you will have something to go on when you ask the girl to marry you. Now think it over, and don’t act in a hurry;” and Mr Jeffson looked inquiringly into his partner’s face to see if his persuasion was taking any effect upon him.Mr Bill Jeffson, when he looked back to the incident, as he often did, with feelings of the most bitter disgust at his bad luck and Charlie’s weakness of conduct, always consoled himself with the reflection that he showed the greatest diplomacy in the way he put it, and felt sure that Charlie was struck by the force of his argument. However, his ingenuity was wasted, for Charlie turned round and told him to clear off or it would be the worse for him, and, without saying a word more, went on towards Jim Heap’s.It was true enough, Charlie thought to himself as Bill Jeffson’s words came back to him, that diamond, if it was worth as much as he thought it must be, would make a good deal of difference to Connie. It was one thing for him to ask her to marry him when she was without means or friends, but it would be different now she had plenty of money and the means of going home and living the life that was suitable for one of her birth. The old General, if he had lived and had found the diamond, would have principally valued his good luck because it would have given him the means of sending Connie home; and he would have been right to have done so. Red Shirt Rush was not a fit place for her, and its inhabitants, who lived dull sordid lives, and whose only ambition was to be successful in their grubbing for diamonds, were not fit society for her. Yet Charlie felt doubtful whether he was fit for any better life than he was leading, and if he persuaded her to marry him he would keep her down to something like it.Should he leave it to her to decide? Was not he somewhat premature in settling whether or no it would be for her good to marry him when he had no reason to believe that she would accept him?But Jeffson’s words came back to his mind. People would say that it was a shame if he persuaded a girl—she was only a girl—into such a disadvantageous marriage; it would be taking advantage of her want of knowledge of the world. And as he saw that, as a matter of honour, he ought not to ask her to marry him, he began to feel more confident of his chances with her, and he felt it all the harder to give them up.He had hardly come to any decision when he arrived at Jim Heap’s house. Jim Heap was standing at the door, and he came out to meet him, and began to tell him about Connie, who was knocked up by the grief and shock of the last few days, and was in bed in a feverish state. Charlie listened to him, and then told the story of his find, and showed Jim Heap the diamond.“Bless me! if this start don’t beat anything I have ever seen, and I have been digging since gold was first found in Australia, and seen one or two queer freaks of fortune! Fancy, now, the old General was just getting on to the bit of luck he was always talking about, when he was killed! Seems something like fate in it all, don’t it? Well, I suppose you are right; this diamond belongs to Connie right enough. I was telling her she was a bit of an heiress, as she had got that ground—not that I thought it was worth anything, but I wanted to cheer her up, and make her think that she wasn’t under any obligation that she couldn’t pay for in coming to me; but it turns out that she is an heiress after all.”“I suppose she will go home now, as that’s what her father would have liked?” said Charlie.“Go home? I never thought of that; but now you say so it’s pretty clear to me that would be right. She has some relations at home, and now she has money they will be civil enough to her; and that stone means money. Nobody knows what a big stone like that is worth—it’s 250 carats, I’d like to bet; and now things are a bit brisker, I guess some of these big dealers would give as much as twenty thousand pounds for it, and make fifty per cent, out of their money.”“Twenty thousand pounds? Yes, you bet it’s worth all that,” said Charlie; and as he looked at the diamond he thought how it was fated to blast all his hopes. Jim Heap, he saw, was at once of the opinion that it was best for her to go home, and every one else would think so too. She was lost to him unless he did an unfair thing.“Poor girl! it won’t take her grief away,” said Jim; “and maybe she won’t like leaving us all ’cause she has never known any better place; but, after a bit, she will know what a good turn you have done her in finding this big ’un for her. It’s lucky that one or two men I know on this digging didn’t find it instead of you, my boy, or Connie would have been none the richer for it. Will you come in and give it her yourself? She is asleep now, but I will tell my missis to wake her up; it’s something worth being woke up for.”“No, don’t wake her up—let her sleep, and you tell her about it when she is better. Maybe it will only excite her now; you had better keep it,” Charlie answered, and he walked back to his tent to sit by himself, and think over his future and Connie’s, and how the wonderful find he had made that afternoon would alter it.By the next day the news of the find was all over the camp, and spread up and down the river, and to Kimberley, where it excited much interest amongst buyers and dealers, who discussed the news of the find, and discounted it and speculated as to how much such a diamond would be worth, and who could afford to buy. Connie was one of the last to hear the news, for, as the day went on, she got worse, and the next morning Charlie met the Barkly doctor coming from Jim Heap’s with rather a bad report to give of her. She had an attack of fever. There was a good deal of it about down the river that year, and her trouble and the shock she had sustained had made it worse, and it would be some time before she could be told of her good luck.“It seems hard that her father shouldn’t have lived to see his luck turned, poor old fellow!” the doctor said to Charlie; “but his daughter will be able to go home now and be educated; that’s what he always talked about. I remember his saying that he felt troubled to think that she was growing up out here, and he had hoped to have made something out of his claims before.”“Yes, she will be able to go home, of course; that’s what she ought to do,” Charlie answered, with something of regret in his voice; “but the place will seem strange without her.”“Yes, the old General and pretty little Connie were quite features in the place, weren’t they? They introduced an element you don’t often see in a digging; but they were both out of place, if you come to think of it; and it’s a good thing that, thanks to you, she can get out of it. It would have been a pity if she had married some river-digger, and lived all her life away from civilisation and out of society. It’s bad enough for a man, but it’s worse for a woman.”Charlie was inclined to think the doctor a conceited ass, who gave himself airs because he was a professional man, and had come out from home, and thought the country where he made his living not good enough for him. Still, he had said what every one else was saying, that Connie ought to go home. There was no doubt about it; he ought to give up all his hopes of winning her. That big diamond had made all the difference; she belonged properly to a different world from the one in which he would have to live his life, and it would be mean and treacherous to the memory of his old friend, her father, if he hindered her from going back to it. He cursed the chance, which had thrown all his plans out of gear, and wished that his partner, Bill Jeffson, had found that diamond, or fate had not placed it in the General’s claim in order to mock him. He wondered whether Connie really did care for him; how sweet the idea of working for her and protecting her had been! Now she did not want his work or protection, and the best thing he could do would be to clear off. The idea of going away took hold of him; it seemed to him that flight was the bravest course he could take. There was some fairly good news from the Transvaal gold-fields just then, and he thought he would go up there.That morning, as he was working at his claim, his partner, who had been across the river, turned up in a state of irritation which he appeared to think praiseworthy and just.“You’re a clever chap you are!” he snarled out, after he had looked with disgust for some time at Charlie working in the claim; “but you’re too clever by half; they are all talking about you at the canteen over the river, and a precious fool they think you, though they say you acted very straight. When I told ’em that your game was to marry the girl, and get the diamond back that way, Higgins, the law agent, said that it wasn’t likely, and that he believed the law would prevent it, ’cause she was a minor, and would be made a ward of the Court, and that it would be a shame if she were to marry the likes of you, and that of course she would go home; and every one agreed with him except Luney White. Why, Higgins, he said that he doubted whether you would get a farthing for having found the diamond, as the High Court, which will have to administer the estate, won’t have any power to grant it. There won’t be as much as a drink stood over that diamond—think of that now—the best stone ever found down the river; and not so much as a glass of square face or Cape smoke stood over it. Oh, it makes me sick!”Charlie told him that if he ever said anything about his wanting to stop Connie going home he would give him the worst thrashing he ever had in his life, for it was a lie. Of course she ought to go away from Red Shirt, and he knew it, and he seemed so much in earnest that Bill Jeffson thought it prudent to lurch away, comforting himself with the reflection that his words had left a sting, and that Charlie would be punished for his foolishness about the diamond.Ah, it was the same story all round; every one said she ought to go home; he must either stay there and see the last of Connie without telling her how much he loved her, or go away somewhere, and of the two alternatives the latter seemed to be the easier. He waited till he heard that Connie was better, and then early one morning he turned his back on Red Shirt, and set off to walk across the veldt to Kimberley.Jim Heap, when he had heard of his intention to start off at once, could not understand it.“There’s nothing sticking out up there for a man without capital, and there is nothing to hurry off there for; I should have thought that you’d have waited till Miss Connie was well enough to see you; I don’t think she will take it over well you’re going off like this without saying good-bye; she’d like to say that, let alone saying thank you for finding it for her.”“There’s no reason for her to thank me, it didn’t give me any trouble to pick it up; and as for saying good-bye, you must say that for me. Tell her that I hope she will go home, as the old General always wished her, and that she’ll be happy. I’d better clear off these Fields at once.”“You haven’t been doing anything wrong—not been on the cross in any way? That Bill Jeffson hasn’t been letting you in or getting you to go in for anything shady?” Jim Heap asked, for from experience a sudden necessity to leave a place was associated in his mind with a desire to get away from the jurisdiction of criminal courts.“No, don’t think that of me; I haven’t been doing anything that’s mean or dishonest, but I ain’t sure I sha’n’t if I stay here,” Charlie said, and, shaking Jim Heap’s horny hand, he left him in a state of considerable bewilderment.Jim Heap was right about Connie taking his sudden departure rather badly. When she was told the two pieces of news, she seemed far more surprised and hurt at Charlie’s having left without saying good-bye to her than she was rejoiced to learn that she was the owner of one of the largest diamonds in the world, and seemed to think that the good luck had come too late now that her father was dead and could not rejoice over it. She did not say much about Charlie, but Jim Heap and his wife both thought that she was a good deal hurt about it. After she had first expressed her surprise at his having gone she rarely mentioned his name. She wanted some share of the price of the diamond, which sold for 20,000 pounds, to be given to him for finding it, but as she was a minor that was impossible. To the plan of her going home she made no objections, for though she looked forward to a change of life without much pleasure, she knew it was what her father would have wished; and one day, some weeks after the diamond was found, a crowd of diggers gave her a last cheer as Jim Heap drove her across the veldt to Barkly, where she was to meet the wife of the clergyman there, who was going home and had arranged to take her under her protection, and duly introduce her to her father’s relations; and nothing was left of the General and Connie except the house in which they used to live and the claims where the big diamond was found; though their memory will live and their story will be told so long as diamonds are dug for on the banks of the Vaal River.After some months, Charlie came back from the gold-fields on foot, for he had found, as Jim Heap prophesied, that there was nothing much sticking out for him up there. He came back with empty pockets and worn-out boots, but he did not seem sickened of the chances of digging, or had not the energy to try anything else, for he turned to his old occupation again. Fortune thought fit to do him a good turn, as it did to many others down the river that year. The Vaal that winter became unusually shallow, and the diggers who went to work in its bed, as they do when they can get at it, found very well. When the river came down again, Charlie had found a nice lot of diamonds which he sold for eight hundred pounds, and, rather to the surprise of every one who knew him, he announced his intention of going for a run home. Maybe he would never have another chance, he said, and he would like to know a little bit more of the world than South Africa. The truth was that he felt a longing to know something about the world in which Connie would live; not that he supposed there was any chance of his seeing her—he did not want to see her, he told himself. So he took his passage home, and in a few weeks found himself in London.After a few weeks of the round of theatres, race meetings, and sight-seeing, which colonists generally go in for, he began to feel half tired and bored with it all. The feeling of being alone in a crowd chilled him, as it does those who have always lived in a small community, and he began to feel something that was very like home-sickness. He was delighted when he came across any one he had known on the Diamond Fields, even finding himself pleased to talk to men whom at the mine he had rather disliked and avoided. He was in this state of mind when he met one Brown, a man whom out there he had always looked upon as an ass. Mr Brown was equally lonely and in want of a companion; he was about to set out on a Continental trip; and though he doubted whether Charlie was not a little too colonial to be a desirable travelling companion, still he thought that it would be better to get him to go with him than travel by himself, so they agreed to travel together, and started for the regulation Rhine and Switzerland trip. Mr Brown’s misgivings as to Charlie were confirmed by his conduct. He hadn’t got the mind for travel, and took nothing in. He was all very well on the Diamond Fields, but he ought to have stopped there, was the opinion expressed to himself of Charlie after they had travelled together for two days. On the Rhine steamer his disgust reached a climax. Charlie showed his hopeless ignorance by saying that the Rhine reminded him of the Vaal River, and he seemed to take more interest in that grovelling fancy than in anything he saw. He refused to listen to Mr Brown’s stories from Murray about the castles and islands he was passing by, nor did he seem to care to have the special beauties of the scenery pointed out to him—for Mr Brown had a nice taste for Nature—but he sat silent and stupid. To tell the truth, his thoughts were far away amongst old familiar scenes. He seemed to see the hut by the river, to hear the swish of the diggers’ cradles and Kaffirs jabbering at their work, and Connie’s silvery laugh as she ran along the bank to her father’s claim. That scene had come back to his mind twenty times a day since he had left Africa.“Did you see that pretty girl who got in at Boppart? You don’t see that sort of woman in Africa. There she is, sitting opposite, next to that white-haired old buffer. Oh, what a fellow you are! you won’t take an interest in anything,” Mr Brown was saying when Charlie woke up from his day-dream, and looking across the deck he saw Connie sitting opposite. She was at the same time wonderfully altered, and yet her old self. The battered old straw hat and the old bright-coloured frock bought at the Barkly store in celebration of one of the General’s meagre finds, which Charlie remembered so well, were replaced by soft deftly-made garments, and she had grown even more beautiful than she promised to be; but Charlie knew her at once, and as he saw her she looked round, and a joyous look of recognition came into her face. In a second he was shaking hands and was being introduced (as Mr Langdale, who was a great friend of ours in South Africa, and who found my diamond for me) to a white-haired gentleman and an elderly, somewhat grim-looking lady, who eyed him rather dubiously, as if they were inclined to doubt whether acquaintances made on the Diamond Fields were very desirable ones; but neither Connie nor Charlie troubled themselves much about them.“What made you go to the gold-fields without waiting to say good-bye to me?” Connie said to him when they were able to talk without being overheard.Charlie looked rather uncomfortable, and began to tell some story of a party who were going to start and would not wait, when Connie interrupted him.“If I thought you had had no better reason than that I should forgive you; as it is, I don’t think I shall unless you tell me something I want to know. You remember the day of the accident;” and a tear came into her eyes as the terrible memory of her father’s death came back to her. “Well, you remember on that day we were talking together under the trees, you and I: you were just going to tell me something when I was called away. Can you remember now what it was you were going to say?”Of course he could remember, and once for all the heroic resolutions he had made and tried to act upon utterly broke down.“I suppose I must tell my cousins about this,” Connie said, after they had talked for some time, as she glanced in the direction of the gentleman and lady she was travelling with, who were regarding them with looks of surprise and disapproval. “They are my guardians, and perhaps they mayn’t like it; but they know I always have my own way, and I think you might have known that too.”She was right, they didn’t like it; but she in the end had her own way, and some twelve months after their meeting a digger of Red Shirt, who was reading a tattered English newspaper at the canteen, came across an advertisement of the marriage of Charles, son of the late Charles Langdale, of the Griqualand West Civil Service, to Constance, daughter of the late John Stanley (late Captain —th Light Infantry), which after much debate was interpreted to mean that Charlie had married the old General’s daughter after all.

The General, as he had been called since diamond-digging first broke out on the banks of the Vaal River, inhabited a hut built of rough stones and thatched with reeds near the river-bank at Red Shirt Rush.

He was the owner of some claims, and he had worked at Red Shirt since he came up to the Vaal from the colony to try his luck as a diamond-digger; and when other diggers went hither and thither to new places on the river, or were attracted by the rich diggings which afterwards became famous as the South African diamond mines, the old General worked on at Red Shirt as if he were quite satisfied with the rewards that fortune thought fit to bestow upon his labours there, and would laugh at the men who were attracted elsewhere by glowing reports. He could hardly be said to be contented with Red Shirt—certainly if he were he expressed his content peculiarly, for he seldom talked of the place without an uncomplimentary epithet; but he probably was imbued with the gambler’s belief in the doctrine of chances, and hoped his luck would change, while he was too discontented with the results of every move he had made in his life to care to make any more. He was generally supposed to be the unluckiest man down the river, and his bad luck was a very favourite subject for discussion and exaggeration at the canteens and places where diggers congregated.

His former history, and the reasons which led him to take to diamond-digging, were subjects which afforded scope for imaginations which found life down the river, when finds were few and far between, barren of topics of interest; and certainly his appearance and manners seemed to show that he was much out of place in the community he found himself in. He was an aristocratic, reserved man, from whom years of rough life had not taken the unmistakable stamp of the military officer.

It was generally believed down the river that the General’s relations at home were very great people, and he was looked upon as a man with a history. Luney White, the Vaal River poet, whose contribution to the Diamond Field newspapers caused quite a furore down the river, many bets being made, and much fighting and drinking being occasioned, by the difficult question of what they were all about, and what he meant by them at all, retailed, on the pretence of having heard it from an army officer at Capetown, a story that the General had allowed the suspicion of a terrible murder to rest upon him so as to shield the really guilty person, a lady of exalted rank, and was, at present, a fugitive from justice in consequence of his noble conduct. Luney’s story rather took for a day or two, until some one remembered having read just such a tale in a book the poet had borrowed from him—a circumstance which threw doubts, not only upon the veracity of the story, but on the originality of their poet’s genius, which, up to then, they had believed in. The General’s real name was hardly known, and he was never spoken of by it, though it was to be seen on a tombstone in the Barkly Cemetery, which was put up to the memory of Constance, wife of John Stanby, of Red Shirt Rush, Vaal River. He was the father of a golden-haired little girl of seventeen, who had grown up from a child on the banks of the Vaal. His story had not really been a romantic or remarkable one. Like many another man of good old family but no money he had gone into the army. After serving for some dozen years he had got into the clutches of the Jews by backing a bill for a brother officer. For some years he fought against his debts, but in the end he was obliged to surrender his commission to his enemies, and leave the service. Then, when his affairs were sufficiently hopeless, he fell in love with and married a girl who had not a penny, and, after having tried in vain to get something to do in England, went out to the Cape and was attracted up to Vaal River when diamonds were first found. Though he was under fifty, he had become a grizzled, old-looking man, broken in spirits by persistent misfortune; and yet he was a strange mixture, for at times he was as sanguine as when he first put a pick into the soil of South Africa.

Those who said that he never found exaggerated his ill-success, though not perhaps his ill-luck; at long intervals a few ill-looking, off-coloured little diamonds had turned up on his sorting-table, which, if they were to be considered as a recompense for all his weary work, were Fortune’s insults added to her injuries; but nevertheless kept up in him a curious sort of hope, which through all his bad luck he retained, notwithstanding his bitter grumbling against South Africa in particular, and all things in general. To himself constantly, and to others when he met any one he cared to speak to, he would inveigh bitterly against his luck. First of all he would wish that he had never gone into the army; then he would curse the fate which had made him choose the particular branch of the service he had gone into; then he would curse the day he had left the service; and then he would collect every malediction he had made use of and every other he knew, and fire one withering sulphurous volley at fate, which had made him a digger on the Vaal River. These explosions would seem to do him much good, for after one of them he would generally seem much relieved, and as likely as not in a few minutes would be talking about what he would do when he found, as he felt sure he would find when he had got the top stuff off his claim, or got into the lime layer which he would strike in another ten feet, or started into the new ground he was going to work in a month or two.

There were two diggers at Red Shirt with whom the General was on intimate terms—Charlie Langdale and Jim Heap. The former was a light-hearted, cheery youngster of about twenty-two, in many respects a typical river-digger. He was restless and unable to take kindly to any work which entailed obedience; had a rare gift for getting into any mischief that was going on, while he possessed very little reverence for his seniors and those who thought themselves his betters; on the other hand, he was superior to many colonial youths in that he did not lie as a rule, nor boast overmuch, and could speak a few sentences without swearing hideously. The first time the General had seen him he was holding his own against a big Irish digger who was trying to bully him out of a claim he was working; and the nonchalant way in which he laughed at the Irishman’s threats, and put the right value on them, impressed the General so much in his favour that he at once struck up an intimacy, and the two became great allies.

The other, Jim Heap, was an old Australian digger who had settled at Red Shirt, where he had become a fixture; for besides having some claims, he had become the proprietor of a store, which his wife looked after for him.

He was a favourite confidant of the General, who would explain to him his theories about diamonds, and show him why he felt certain he would soon find and be able to leave the country—theories which Jim Heap would listen to gravely enough, though he did not believe in them one bit; but, as he would say to Charlie, what was the good of putting a damper on the old man’s hopes? His life was bad enough as it was, but would be unbearable if he did not go on hoping that he would soon make his pile, and be able to take his little girl home to England. Sometimes, however, he would offer him advice, which the old General—who, though he considered diamond-digging a hateful occupation into which he had been forced by a malignant fate, believed himself to be as good an authority as any one on the subject—would greatly resent. Charlie Langdale also would sometimes venture on the same subject, and one morning, as he sat after dinner smoking under the trees near the General’s house, he had greatly aroused his old friend’s anger by criticising his way of working.

“What! say my drive is dangerous!” the General had burst out, after he had listened to Charlie for some time, “and I shan’t get anything in that ground I am driving into! I should like to know what you mean by talking to me about it. Why, if I don’t know something about river digging, I’d like to know who does. I have been digging since they first found diamonds in this cursed country, and have stuck to the river all the time, and never left it for the New Rush when all the others did. A lot I have got for it so far. Well, it’s a long lane that has got no turning; and there is Connie, perhaps she wouldn’t be as well as she is if we had left the river and gone to Kimberley,” he added.

“By Jove, yes, you’re right, it’s healthier here than at Kimberley, and she couldn’t look better than she does, could she?” Charlie answered, with a flush of admiration coming across his bright young face, as he looked round and saw a golden-haired, blue-eyed girl, whose bright beauty was unharmed by the pitiless South African sun and climate, which often enough makes sad havoc of a woman’s looks.

The sight of Connie, however, made Charlie go back to his subject, regardless of the General’s wrath. “I don’t like the look of that drive, don’t like those boulders that are above you; why don’t you leave it alone and go into fresh ground? I think it dangerous, so does Jim Heap; he told Connie that you ought not to work in it; and she is wretched about it every time you go to the claim.”

“It seems to me that every one thinks they can interfere with me—you and Connie, and then Jim Heap, who thinks no one understands anything about digging but himself;” and the General drew in his breath to prepare for a burst of eloquence anent Jim Heap, when his daughter came up, and, feeling that he couldn’t do justice to the subject in her presence, he went into the house choking with indignation.

“I wish some one could persuade him to give up that work. But it’s no use, he thinks he is a greater authority about digging than any one else,” Connie said, guessing from her father’s suppressed indignation that Charlie had been broaching the question of the dangerous state of his claim.

“Yes, I wish he would go into fresh ground. I never believed in those claims of his, they’re too near the river.”

“You will never get him to do that. You know that years ago he saw a big diamond found in the claim next to where he is, which looked, he said, as if it were chipped off a much bigger one, and he is as sure in his own mind as he is of anything that the other bit is somewhere about near where he is working.”

“Well, I dare say the claim is safe enough, and I hope he will come across the big ’un, which is going to make his fortune,” said Charlie, who was always ready to look at the bright side of things. “It was only the other day he was saying that it was about time he found, as you were growing too old to be living at Red Shirt.”

“Poor old dear, he is always troubling himself about me, and says I am growing up a perfect savage, without any accomplishments and very little education, and shall have terribly hard work to make up for lost time when I get home. Well, I’ll back myself to cook, set a line for fish, nurse any one who’s down with fever, and sort for diamonds, against any one on the river; these are accomplishments enough for Red Shirt, and that’s where I shall be all my life, so far as I can see. He was talking the other day about sending me home, and staying out here himself; but that’s absurd, isn’t it?”

Charlie did not answer. The idea of Red Shirt Rush without Connie was miserable enough, for all his good sense told him that the General was right. Connie ought not to be growing up in a digger’s camp, with little education that was not of a very practical character.

“Why don’t you say that I couldn’t be improved, Charlie? You’re not half polite. I suspect you’re comparing me with some of those fine ladies you have met at Kimberley. Come, I bet I know about as much out of books as they do, for I have read all the old man has, and they are a good mixed lot. Besides, if I want educating ever so much, how could I go home and leave him by himself? He is wretched enough as it is, and I couldn’t bear to leave him—besides, I don’t want to say good-bye to all my old friends.”

Charlie’s heart gave rather a jump—he wondered whether he were one of the friends she would most mind saying good-bye to. He didn’t believe much in the General’s sanguine expectations being realised, and thought that Connie was likely to stand in need some day of a stronger protector than her father; and her words gave him a feeling of hope, and he determined that he would speak out. Just then, however, the General’s voice was heard calling for Connie, and the interruption disconcerted Charlie, who turned off a sentence he was beginning and determined to put it off for another day. His heart failed him, and he thought that the old General would not like it, and that Connie might take it amiss; so knocking the ashes out of his pipe he said good-bye to Connie, and walked up the bank to where he was working, although he longed to stay and talk to her, and there was not the slightest reason why he should not have done so. On his way to his claim he passed the ground where the General was working. It was a claim which had been partly worked in the old days, before the New Rush, as the Kimberley mine was then called, was found, and had been deserted before it had been worked out.

After its former owners had abandoned it and had gone to try their luck at the new diggings, the General had worked it down to the bed rock, some thirty feet deep, and was driving into the side of the claim towards the ground where he had seen the diamond found. Charlie stood for a moment or two watching him at work.

The drive certainly did not look very safe; the old man was working near a mass of rock which jutted out over him. The ground into which he was driving was the only part of the adjoining claim that had not been worked out, its former owners having thrown their stones and rubbish there, and so had been unable to get at it easily when they had worked out the rest of the claim. The weight on the natural surface of the ground made the place where the General was driving into look all the more awkward.

“I say, that’s rather a nasty-looking boulder you are working under, isn’t it? It would flatten out any one in the drive pretty well if it were to slip,” Charlie shouted out to the General, who had crawled out of his drive for a minute.

“Slip! Bosh! Suppose the moon were to slip. Nothing but dynamite would move that boulder! Perhaps you would like to teach me how to work the claim,” the elder digger growled out in response; and then he crawled into the tunnel, and Charlie went on, knowing that it was useless to remonstrate any more, and hoping that it would be all right.

“Well, youngster, you’ve come back to work at last; you’re a pretty sort of partner! Been down at the General’s? You’re always loafing down there—it makes me laugh to see how that little bit of a girl fools you,” a big dissipated-looking man, who was lying on the ground smoking a pipe, said as Charlie came up to the claim.

This was his partner, Bill Jeffson, and as he heard his voice Charlie thought to himself that one of the first steps he would take towards turning over a new leaf would be to break with Mr Bill, so he answered him rather shortly, and told him that he had better mind his own business.

“That’s it, quarrel with an old chum, I suppose. I ain’t good enough for you now you’ve got to know the old General. I don’t know what’s come over you: you can’t take a joke, you never go on the spree, and you put on no end of frills just because you know that poverty-stricken old dead-beat and his daughter,” Jeffson growled out as he got up, stretched himself, and lounged into the claim, while Charlie settled down at the sorting-table.

Several hours had passed without anything happening to vary the dull monotony of the work, when Charlie suddenly sprang up with an exclamation of surprise.

“Hullo! what’s up? Have you found one?” Jeffson called out.

“Found one! no. I heard some one cry out; there it is again. It’s from the General’s claim,” said Charlie, as he started to run, leaving his partner, who was never over much interested in other people’s affairs, to lounge after him.

After Charlie had gone a little way, he met Connie, who, with a white startled face, was running towards him, crying loudly for help.

“Go back and get picks and a crowbar. You have one. It’s father; he has had an accident; the ground has come down. I will go and bring some other men,” she gasped out; and then she ran past him towards the claims where Jim Heap and some other diggers were working.

The first glance Charlie got of the claim to which he ran, after he had shouted to his partner to bring the Kaffirs with their tools, told him what had happened.

Jim Heap’s prophecy turned out to be true! The drive had fallen, and it was blocked up by a mass of boulders and earth. Of the poor old General nothing could be seen; but it was not hard to guess where he was, and Charlie began to dig madly with his hands into the fallen earth and throw some of the loose stones on one side, a cold sweat running down his face as he realised the terrible fate that had come to his old friend. He had not been at his work long before better help arrived.

Jeffson with the Kaffirs set to work with their shovels; and Jim Heap, who at once took in the situation, and, giving the others directions, set to work at the fallen ground, looking up as he did so at Connie, who, having followed him back, stood watching them.

“Don’t take on, my dear. I have seen men come out all right from worse places than this, and be none the worse for it,” he said to her; but his tone was not quite as hopeful as his words.

She did not answer him, but watched them, speechless and tearless, with an awful look of misery on her white set face. She had not long to wait in suspense. After the work had gone on for some time, she heard a murmur from the men, which told her there was little ground for hope. The boulder under which he had been working had shifted, and her father was lying with the life crushed out of him underneath it. They tried to get her away before they moved the boulder and dragged out the lifeless body, but she would not go, and stood watching them, and followed the men who carried it back into the house without saying a word or even shedding a tear.

“Poor girl! it’s a terrible bad business for her. I’ll send my missis to her; she will sit up with her and try and comfort her—not that any one can do her much good, poor little lass,” the old digger said, with something like a tear running down his weather-beaten old face. And then he went to his tent to send his wife, a Devonshire-born woman, whose kindly nature had not been hardened by years of rough life on Australian and South African diggings, to share poor Connie’s sad watch.

On the following day the poor old General was buried at Barkly, and there was not much work done at Red Shirt Rush, for most of the diggers followed their old comrade, whom they liked and respected for all his crotchety temper and reserved manner, to his last resting-place. For years there had not been so many men from the river camps in that sleepy little township. It was remarked that the great majority of them left Barkly quite sober, and that there were not more than three fights and no general disturbance. This exemplary conduct was caused partly by a sense of the sadness of the poor old General’s death, and more by the memory of poor little Connie’s piteous face as she stood by the side of the grave. When the funeral was over, Connie, who, in the first shock of her sorrow, had thought nothing about herself, began to realise how friendless and homeless she was.

Jim Heap had borrowed a cart and a pair of horses, and driven her and his wife over to Barkly, and on the way back he somehow guessed what she was thinking about.

“Maybe, Miss Connie, there are some of your relations at home you ought to write to about this; but until you hear you must stay with us, if you don’t mind living with plain people in a rough place that ain’t fit for a lady like you. While we’ve a roof over our heads, you need not trouble about finding a home. You know, miss, how proud we should be to have you with us; the missis and me have talked that over already.”

“How kind you are to me! I don’t want to leave Red Shirt Rush; all my friends are there, and every one seems so kind to me; but I shall be a burden to you. I must try and get my own living somehow,” poor Connie answered.

“Burden to us? Don’t talk of that; why, you talk as if you haven’t got anything of your own; why, there’s those claims which are worth a good bit of money maybe, and there is a heap of stuff the General got out of it which hasn’t been sorted yet.”

Connie remembered how now and then in her father’s lifetime Jim Heap had expressed a very different opinion about the value of the ground which had cost her so much, but she did not say any more.

Another person who thought about Connie’s future was Charlie Langdale. There is no need to say how he would have planned it, and the day after the poor old General was buried—it was a Sunday morning—he was strolling along the river-bank thinking over his plans for the future. He would give up the river, he thought, and go to Kimberley and try and get a sub-managership or something of the sort from one of the companies which would give him a fixed income. Regular work and wages up to that time had had very little attraction to him. He liked working on his own account down the river with no one to order him about, and the gambling uncertainty of river-digging was just suited to his happy-go-lucky disposition; but he thought that he would not mind how irksome the work he got to do was, so long as it would give him a prospect of marrying Connie. If she would only give him just a glimpse of a hope he would ask for no more, till he had shown what sort of stuff he was made of, he declared to himself as he tried to weigh his chance, and went from the depths of despair to hopefulness and back, as he tried to recall the occasions on which he might possibly have shown her how much he cared for her. He had walked along the bank thinking over this question until he had come to the old General’s claims, and, looking at the trees by the little house, he thought of the last time he had stood under them talking to her, and had almost made up his mind to tell her. Well, he would have to wait a bit now. Poor girl, it would not do to talk to her till she had got over the first of her sorrow. Then he walked into the claim, and stood near where the accident had happened, and as he thought he scratched with a stick he had in his hand amongst the loose gravel which the party working to rescue the General had thrown out. By chance he looked down at his feet, and found himself hitting with his stick at something that looked very different from the other pebbles. He was too intent on his thoughts to pay much heed to it, though in an absent way he was looking at it. Suddenly he gave a start, and picked it up; it was a big white diamond!

The diamond was just such a stone as the poor old General used to describe when he talked of the one he expected to come across—such a stone as he argued that the one he saw in the next claim years before had been chipped. The old man’s theory was rubbish, Charlie had always believed, but there, sure enough, was a diamond that bore it out. It must have been dislodged from the ground that had fallen, and when he met his death the General was very near the prize he had somehow always expected to find. Charlie examined the diamond carefully; he had never seen so large a stone of the same quality before. He could not estimate its value, but it was worth a good many thousands, he believed, for it would probably be one of the finest stones in the world.

“Hullo! what have you got there? Show me. Put it in your pocket and hurry away from this place; remember we’re partners, old man; come, look slippy, we don’t want any one to see us mouching about here,” Charlie heard a voice say in his ear, and looking round, he saw his partner, Bill Jeffson, who was staring with big eyes at the diamond, and in his amazement at seeing it had dropped a bottle of ‘Cape smoke’ on the ground without even using one word of bad language.

“What do you mean? What’s our partnership got to do with this diamond? it’s not found in our claim.”

“That’s it, you darned fool! It’s got to be found in our claim; that’s the only place you can find a diamond in legally if one wants to stick to it.”

“Stick to it. Why, this belongs to the General, and I am going to give it up to Jim Heap.”

“Stop, you ain’t going to give that diamond up to Jim Heap! You’re mad! Stop! Man alive, how can the diamond belong to any one except the first man who finds it? These claims are abandoned.”

Charlie paid no heed to the other, who was trembling with excitement and greed, but pushed past him and walked in the direction of Jim Heap’s house.

Bill Jeffson stood for some seconds watching him, thinking what he could say or do to get some share in the diamond he had seen; then he ran after him, and caught hold of him by the arm.

“Look here, Charlie—now don’t get riled with an old chum. Look here, now let me put it to you—ain’t you making a mistake? Why don’t you stick to the diamond? You say it belongs to the old General’s girl. Well, you’re sweet on her, and want to marry her, so it won’t hurt her if you do stick to it; she’ll get her share, and it will be all one to her; while if you give it up see where are you—why, you lose the diamond and her too. You don’t suppose that she would marry you if she had a fortune of her own, and that diamond means a fortune, mind you. She is a lady by birth, mind, and has relations in England who are as fine people as any in the land, so I’ve heard; and though they won’t put themselves out about her now—she would only be a trouble to ’em—it would be a different story if she were a bit of an heiress. Why, every one would cry shame, and say you were standing in the girl’s light and preventing her taking her proper place. Now, look here, you say you found that diamond in our claim—you and I can settle about my share—and then you will have something to go on when you ask the girl to marry you. Now think it over, and don’t act in a hurry;” and Mr Jeffson looked inquiringly into his partner’s face to see if his persuasion was taking any effect upon him.

Mr Bill Jeffson, when he looked back to the incident, as he often did, with feelings of the most bitter disgust at his bad luck and Charlie’s weakness of conduct, always consoled himself with the reflection that he showed the greatest diplomacy in the way he put it, and felt sure that Charlie was struck by the force of his argument. However, his ingenuity was wasted, for Charlie turned round and told him to clear off or it would be the worse for him, and, without saying a word more, went on towards Jim Heap’s.

It was true enough, Charlie thought to himself as Bill Jeffson’s words came back to him, that diamond, if it was worth as much as he thought it must be, would make a good deal of difference to Connie. It was one thing for him to ask her to marry him when she was without means or friends, but it would be different now she had plenty of money and the means of going home and living the life that was suitable for one of her birth. The old General, if he had lived and had found the diamond, would have principally valued his good luck because it would have given him the means of sending Connie home; and he would have been right to have done so. Red Shirt Rush was not a fit place for her, and its inhabitants, who lived dull sordid lives, and whose only ambition was to be successful in their grubbing for diamonds, were not fit society for her. Yet Charlie felt doubtful whether he was fit for any better life than he was leading, and if he persuaded her to marry him he would keep her down to something like it.

Should he leave it to her to decide? Was not he somewhat premature in settling whether or no it would be for her good to marry him when he had no reason to believe that she would accept him?

But Jeffson’s words came back to his mind. People would say that it was a shame if he persuaded a girl—she was only a girl—into such a disadvantageous marriage; it would be taking advantage of her want of knowledge of the world. And as he saw that, as a matter of honour, he ought not to ask her to marry him, he began to feel more confident of his chances with her, and he felt it all the harder to give them up.

He had hardly come to any decision when he arrived at Jim Heap’s house. Jim Heap was standing at the door, and he came out to meet him, and began to tell him about Connie, who was knocked up by the grief and shock of the last few days, and was in bed in a feverish state. Charlie listened to him, and then told the story of his find, and showed Jim Heap the diamond.

“Bless me! if this start don’t beat anything I have ever seen, and I have been digging since gold was first found in Australia, and seen one or two queer freaks of fortune! Fancy, now, the old General was just getting on to the bit of luck he was always talking about, when he was killed! Seems something like fate in it all, don’t it? Well, I suppose you are right; this diamond belongs to Connie right enough. I was telling her she was a bit of an heiress, as she had got that ground—not that I thought it was worth anything, but I wanted to cheer her up, and make her think that she wasn’t under any obligation that she couldn’t pay for in coming to me; but it turns out that she is an heiress after all.”

“I suppose she will go home now, as that’s what her father would have liked?” said Charlie.

“Go home? I never thought of that; but now you say so it’s pretty clear to me that would be right. She has some relations at home, and now she has money they will be civil enough to her; and that stone means money. Nobody knows what a big stone like that is worth—it’s 250 carats, I’d like to bet; and now things are a bit brisker, I guess some of these big dealers would give as much as twenty thousand pounds for it, and make fifty per cent, out of their money.”

“Twenty thousand pounds? Yes, you bet it’s worth all that,” said Charlie; and as he looked at the diamond he thought how it was fated to blast all his hopes. Jim Heap, he saw, was at once of the opinion that it was best for her to go home, and every one else would think so too. She was lost to him unless he did an unfair thing.

“Poor girl! it won’t take her grief away,” said Jim; “and maybe she won’t like leaving us all ’cause she has never known any better place; but, after a bit, she will know what a good turn you have done her in finding this big ’un for her. It’s lucky that one or two men I know on this digging didn’t find it instead of you, my boy, or Connie would have been none the richer for it. Will you come in and give it her yourself? She is asleep now, but I will tell my missis to wake her up; it’s something worth being woke up for.”

“No, don’t wake her up—let her sleep, and you tell her about it when she is better. Maybe it will only excite her now; you had better keep it,” Charlie answered, and he walked back to his tent to sit by himself, and think over his future and Connie’s, and how the wonderful find he had made that afternoon would alter it.

By the next day the news of the find was all over the camp, and spread up and down the river, and to Kimberley, where it excited much interest amongst buyers and dealers, who discussed the news of the find, and discounted it and speculated as to how much such a diamond would be worth, and who could afford to buy. Connie was one of the last to hear the news, for, as the day went on, she got worse, and the next morning Charlie met the Barkly doctor coming from Jim Heap’s with rather a bad report to give of her. She had an attack of fever. There was a good deal of it about down the river that year, and her trouble and the shock she had sustained had made it worse, and it would be some time before she could be told of her good luck.

“It seems hard that her father shouldn’t have lived to see his luck turned, poor old fellow!” the doctor said to Charlie; “but his daughter will be able to go home now and be educated; that’s what he always talked about. I remember his saying that he felt troubled to think that she was growing up out here, and he had hoped to have made something out of his claims before.”

“Yes, she will be able to go home, of course; that’s what she ought to do,” Charlie answered, with something of regret in his voice; “but the place will seem strange without her.”

“Yes, the old General and pretty little Connie were quite features in the place, weren’t they? They introduced an element you don’t often see in a digging; but they were both out of place, if you come to think of it; and it’s a good thing that, thanks to you, she can get out of it. It would have been a pity if she had married some river-digger, and lived all her life away from civilisation and out of society. It’s bad enough for a man, but it’s worse for a woman.”

Charlie was inclined to think the doctor a conceited ass, who gave himself airs because he was a professional man, and had come out from home, and thought the country where he made his living not good enough for him. Still, he had said what every one else was saying, that Connie ought to go home. There was no doubt about it; he ought to give up all his hopes of winning her. That big diamond had made all the difference; she belonged properly to a different world from the one in which he would have to live his life, and it would be mean and treacherous to the memory of his old friend, her father, if he hindered her from going back to it. He cursed the chance, which had thrown all his plans out of gear, and wished that his partner, Bill Jeffson, had found that diamond, or fate had not placed it in the General’s claim in order to mock him. He wondered whether Connie really did care for him; how sweet the idea of working for her and protecting her had been! Now she did not want his work or protection, and the best thing he could do would be to clear off. The idea of going away took hold of him; it seemed to him that flight was the bravest course he could take. There was some fairly good news from the Transvaal gold-fields just then, and he thought he would go up there.

That morning, as he was working at his claim, his partner, who had been across the river, turned up in a state of irritation which he appeared to think praiseworthy and just.

“You’re a clever chap you are!” he snarled out, after he had looked with disgust for some time at Charlie working in the claim; “but you’re too clever by half; they are all talking about you at the canteen over the river, and a precious fool they think you, though they say you acted very straight. When I told ’em that your game was to marry the girl, and get the diamond back that way, Higgins, the law agent, said that it wasn’t likely, and that he believed the law would prevent it, ’cause she was a minor, and would be made a ward of the Court, and that it would be a shame if she were to marry the likes of you, and that of course she would go home; and every one agreed with him except Luney White. Why, Higgins, he said that he doubted whether you would get a farthing for having found the diamond, as the High Court, which will have to administer the estate, won’t have any power to grant it. There won’t be as much as a drink stood over that diamond—think of that now—the best stone ever found down the river; and not so much as a glass of square face or Cape smoke stood over it. Oh, it makes me sick!”

Charlie told him that if he ever said anything about his wanting to stop Connie going home he would give him the worst thrashing he ever had in his life, for it was a lie. Of course she ought to go away from Red Shirt, and he knew it, and he seemed so much in earnest that Bill Jeffson thought it prudent to lurch away, comforting himself with the reflection that his words had left a sting, and that Charlie would be punished for his foolishness about the diamond.

Ah, it was the same story all round; every one said she ought to go home; he must either stay there and see the last of Connie without telling her how much he loved her, or go away somewhere, and of the two alternatives the latter seemed to be the easier. He waited till he heard that Connie was better, and then early one morning he turned his back on Red Shirt, and set off to walk across the veldt to Kimberley.

Jim Heap, when he had heard of his intention to start off at once, could not understand it.

“There’s nothing sticking out up there for a man without capital, and there is nothing to hurry off there for; I should have thought that you’d have waited till Miss Connie was well enough to see you; I don’t think she will take it over well you’re going off like this without saying good-bye; she’d like to say that, let alone saying thank you for finding it for her.”

“There’s no reason for her to thank me, it didn’t give me any trouble to pick it up; and as for saying good-bye, you must say that for me. Tell her that I hope she will go home, as the old General always wished her, and that she’ll be happy. I’d better clear off these Fields at once.”

“You haven’t been doing anything wrong—not been on the cross in any way? That Bill Jeffson hasn’t been letting you in or getting you to go in for anything shady?” Jim Heap asked, for from experience a sudden necessity to leave a place was associated in his mind with a desire to get away from the jurisdiction of criminal courts.

“No, don’t think that of me; I haven’t been doing anything that’s mean or dishonest, but I ain’t sure I sha’n’t if I stay here,” Charlie said, and, shaking Jim Heap’s horny hand, he left him in a state of considerable bewilderment.

Jim Heap was right about Connie taking his sudden departure rather badly. When she was told the two pieces of news, she seemed far more surprised and hurt at Charlie’s having left without saying good-bye to her than she was rejoiced to learn that she was the owner of one of the largest diamonds in the world, and seemed to think that the good luck had come too late now that her father was dead and could not rejoice over it. She did not say much about Charlie, but Jim Heap and his wife both thought that she was a good deal hurt about it. After she had first expressed her surprise at his having gone she rarely mentioned his name. She wanted some share of the price of the diamond, which sold for 20,000 pounds, to be given to him for finding it, but as she was a minor that was impossible. To the plan of her going home she made no objections, for though she looked forward to a change of life without much pleasure, she knew it was what her father would have wished; and one day, some weeks after the diamond was found, a crowd of diggers gave her a last cheer as Jim Heap drove her across the veldt to Barkly, where she was to meet the wife of the clergyman there, who was going home and had arranged to take her under her protection, and duly introduce her to her father’s relations; and nothing was left of the General and Connie except the house in which they used to live and the claims where the big diamond was found; though their memory will live and their story will be told so long as diamonds are dug for on the banks of the Vaal River.

After some months, Charlie came back from the gold-fields on foot, for he had found, as Jim Heap prophesied, that there was nothing much sticking out for him up there. He came back with empty pockets and worn-out boots, but he did not seem sickened of the chances of digging, or had not the energy to try anything else, for he turned to his old occupation again. Fortune thought fit to do him a good turn, as it did to many others down the river that year. The Vaal that winter became unusually shallow, and the diggers who went to work in its bed, as they do when they can get at it, found very well. When the river came down again, Charlie had found a nice lot of diamonds which he sold for eight hundred pounds, and, rather to the surprise of every one who knew him, he announced his intention of going for a run home. Maybe he would never have another chance, he said, and he would like to know a little bit more of the world than South Africa. The truth was that he felt a longing to know something about the world in which Connie would live; not that he supposed there was any chance of his seeing her—he did not want to see her, he told himself. So he took his passage home, and in a few weeks found himself in London.

After a few weeks of the round of theatres, race meetings, and sight-seeing, which colonists generally go in for, he began to feel half tired and bored with it all. The feeling of being alone in a crowd chilled him, as it does those who have always lived in a small community, and he began to feel something that was very like home-sickness. He was delighted when he came across any one he had known on the Diamond Fields, even finding himself pleased to talk to men whom at the mine he had rather disliked and avoided. He was in this state of mind when he met one Brown, a man whom out there he had always looked upon as an ass. Mr Brown was equally lonely and in want of a companion; he was about to set out on a Continental trip; and though he doubted whether Charlie was not a little too colonial to be a desirable travelling companion, still he thought that it would be better to get him to go with him than travel by himself, so they agreed to travel together, and started for the regulation Rhine and Switzerland trip. Mr Brown’s misgivings as to Charlie were confirmed by his conduct. He hadn’t got the mind for travel, and took nothing in. He was all very well on the Diamond Fields, but he ought to have stopped there, was the opinion expressed to himself of Charlie after they had travelled together for two days. On the Rhine steamer his disgust reached a climax. Charlie showed his hopeless ignorance by saying that the Rhine reminded him of the Vaal River, and he seemed to take more interest in that grovelling fancy than in anything he saw. He refused to listen to Mr Brown’s stories from Murray about the castles and islands he was passing by, nor did he seem to care to have the special beauties of the scenery pointed out to him—for Mr Brown had a nice taste for Nature—but he sat silent and stupid. To tell the truth, his thoughts were far away amongst old familiar scenes. He seemed to see the hut by the river, to hear the swish of the diggers’ cradles and Kaffirs jabbering at their work, and Connie’s silvery laugh as she ran along the bank to her father’s claim. That scene had come back to his mind twenty times a day since he had left Africa.

“Did you see that pretty girl who got in at Boppart? You don’t see that sort of woman in Africa. There she is, sitting opposite, next to that white-haired old buffer. Oh, what a fellow you are! you won’t take an interest in anything,” Mr Brown was saying when Charlie woke up from his day-dream, and looking across the deck he saw Connie sitting opposite. She was at the same time wonderfully altered, and yet her old self. The battered old straw hat and the old bright-coloured frock bought at the Barkly store in celebration of one of the General’s meagre finds, which Charlie remembered so well, were replaced by soft deftly-made garments, and she had grown even more beautiful than she promised to be; but Charlie knew her at once, and as he saw her she looked round, and a joyous look of recognition came into her face. In a second he was shaking hands and was being introduced (as Mr Langdale, who was a great friend of ours in South Africa, and who found my diamond for me) to a white-haired gentleman and an elderly, somewhat grim-looking lady, who eyed him rather dubiously, as if they were inclined to doubt whether acquaintances made on the Diamond Fields were very desirable ones; but neither Connie nor Charlie troubled themselves much about them.

“What made you go to the gold-fields without waiting to say good-bye to me?” Connie said to him when they were able to talk without being overheard.

Charlie looked rather uncomfortable, and began to tell some story of a party who were going to start and would not wait, when Connie interrupted him.

“If I thought you had had no better reason than that I should forgive you; as it is, I don’t think I shall unless you tell me something I want to know. You remember the day of the accident;” and a tear came into her eyes as the terrible memory of her father’s death came back to her. “Well, you remember on that day we were talking together under the trees, you and I: you were just going to tell me something when I was called away. Can you remember now what it was you were going to say?”

Of course he could remember, and once for all the heroic resolutions he had made and tried to act upon utterly broke down.

“I suppose I must tell my cousins about this,” Connie said, after they had talked for some time, as she glanced in the direction of the gentleman and lady she was travelling with, who were regarding them with looks of surprise and disapproval. “They are my guardians, and perhaps they mayn’t like it; but they know I always have my own way, and I think you might have known that too.”

She was right, they didn’t like it; but she in the end had her own way, and some twelve months after their meeting a digger of Red Shirt, who was reading a tattered English newspaper at the canteen, came across an advertisement of the marriage of Charles, son of the late Charles Langdale, of the Griqualand West Civil Service, to Constance, daughter of the late John Stanley (late Captain —th Light Infantry), which after much debate was interpreted to mean that Charlie had married the old General’s daughter after all.

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