The Man Who Won

BY

MRS. BAILLIE REYNOLDS
(G. M. ROBINS)

AUTHOR OF
"PHOEBE IN FETTERS," "THE DREAM AND THE MAN," ETC.

"Let a man contend to the uttermost
For his life's set prize, be it what it may."
—ROBERT BROWNING,

LONDON
HUTCHINSON & CO.
PATERNOSTER ROW
1905

Printed by Cowan & Co., Limited, Perth.

To
M. ADELINE HUGHES
UNTIRING SYMPATHISER
TENDER CRITIC
DEAR FRIEND

CONTENTS

CHAP.

I [LUTWYCHE'S]
II [MILLIE]
III [THE RIVALS]
IV [THE GUARDIANSHIP OF CAROL MAYNE]
V [A BOER BURYING]
VI [THE FLINGING OF THE GAGE]
VII [IN THE GARRET]
VIII [THE RESCUE]
IX [THE SCANDALISING OF SLABBERT'S POORT]
X [FRANSDALE]
XI [MELICENT'S COUSINS]
XII [THE JARRING ELEMENT]
XIII [LANCE BURMESTER IS CONSCIOUS OF A PERSONALITY]
XIV [THE BREAKING-IN OF MELICENT]
XV [A CLEVESHIRE TEA-PARTY]
XVI [BREAKING BOUNDS]
XVII [A CRISIS AT THE VICARAGE]
XVIII [A NEW HOME]
XIX [AN UNMARKED FESTIVAL]
XX [CAPTAIN BROOKE]
XXI [MIRAGE]
XXII [RECOGNITION]
XXIII [REBELLION]
XXIV [UNREST]
XXV [THE WAY OUT]
XXVI [THE END OF THE FIRST ROUND]
XXVII [THREE MONTHS' TRUCE]
XXVIII [THE GATES OF SPRING ARE OPENED]
XXIX [THE FRIENDSHIP GROWS]
XXX [TREACHERY]
XXXI [REPUDIATION]
XXXII [THE FRANSDALE SPORTS]
XXXIII [CALUMNY]
XXXIV [THE DISCOMFITURE OF OTIS]
XXXV [CONFESSION]
XXXVI [WHAT CHANCED UPON THE MOORS]
XXXVII [THE HOUSE IS BUILT]

THE MAN WHO WON

CHAPTER I
LUTWYCHE'S

"Handsome, were you? 'Tis more than they held,
More than they said. I was ware, and watched.
I was the scapegrace, this rat belled
The cat, this fool got his whiskers scratched."
—ROBERT BROWNING.

The talk had waxed political, and the audience was frankly bored. The man who had been haranguing his mates was hurt at the somewhat too obvious lack of appreciation which his truly democratic sentiments received.

"Ef yer could quit twinin' yerself araound that thar' post a spell, an' listen to a bit o' horse-sense"—he broke off angrily.

"It's usually hoarse when you take the floor, Amurrica," was the surly reply; "but it's blasted little sense I've ever heard come outer your head."

"Ef you was to listen, it 'ud make a powerful deal o' difference to what you heard," snapped Amurrica, whose eloquence was his chief vanity.

"I ain't good at listening," indifferently replied the blond and bearded giant, who was "twinin' hisself araound the post," "onless a man's talkin'; an' that's a fact."

There was a giggle of appreciation among the half-dozen men and youths collected at the gate of the farm enclosure.

"No good, Amurrica; chuck it! Bert'll git there every time," said someone cheerfully.

Amurrica snorted.

"Talkin', indeed! Why, you low-downers in this all-fired continent of Africa, you don' know what talkin' means!"

"Usually means lyin' over in America, don't it?" said Bert casually.

His eyes were fixed on vacancy as he spoke; the chatter of the group around him was nothing but a weariness, like the buzzing of flies. His mind was fixed upon what was going on in the low frame house, with the corrugated iron roof, that stood within the enclosure. He was experiencing something more like anxiety than he had ever felt before in all his four-and-twenty years.

It was oppressively hot. For miles and miles, the pitiless sun lit up the endless veldt, which undulated all around the little township: wild, yet with a dreadful sameness in it.

"As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be," seemed written upon the face of the desert; yet here and there its dignity was scarred, its monotony interfered with, by the ugliness and meanness of human habitation. The beginnings of civilisation, without simplicity as they were without harmony, jarred every sense. The places seemed to be devoid of self-respect or privacy; to consist, in fact, entirely of back premises. Rows of dingy linen flapped upon lines, on ground where the grass was irregularly worn away here and there by the treading of feet. Collections of old meat tins, old kettles, old shoes, heaped upon kitchen refuse, burdened the stale air with miasma. A wretched-looking, lean-to building bore a huge board with the flaunting inscription:

MOUNT PLEASANT BOARDING-HOUSE FOR
GENTLEMEN

The gentlemen who boarded there were mostly assembled to-night at the gate of "Lutwyche's."

A little farther away the Vierkleur Hotel fluttered its flag in the heavy air, and rang at night to the coarse laughter and oaths of a set of idlers, attracted to what had been a purely agricultural district by the finding of diamonds.

Lutwyche's lay silent, sweltering in the heat. Round the stoep of the farm-house hungry poultry were congregated; to-day they were being neglected, and they were wisely determined not to suffer in silence.

It was a critical moment in history. All Europe was waiting to know what President Kruger was going to do. It was the period which preceded the sending of his historical ultimatum. The town for days had been buzzing with rumours of war, and Amurrica had spoken great things in the saloon of the Vierkleur. But local interests are strong, and it was not of British supremacy that the men were thinking now.

The sun was going down. They had all, as Amurrica said, quit work, and they were assembled by the barbed wire fence to gather news of the Englishman who lay dying under the corrugated iron roof of Lutwyche's.

Even the quarrelling was listless. It could be seen that Bert's heart was not in it. Where the heart of the huge young Boer was was matter of pretty common knowledge, though there was not a man in the settlement who would have dared to tell him so, except Amurrica, who had his own reasons for not indulging in the perilous amusement.

Presently the door of the silent house opened, and a Kaffir girl came out, with a dirty rug in her hand, from which she proceeded to shake clouds of stifling acrid dust.

"Here, Minnie, Topsy, Hattie, whoever you are, how's the boss—eh?" called one of the loungers.

The girl showed all her teeth in an apparently endless grin.

"You young gentlemen carled to inquire?" she cried, in high appreciation of the family importance. "You brought yo' visitin'-cards—eh?"

"Shut it," said Bert savagely. "How is Mr. Lutwyche?"

"He don' seem not just the right thing to-day, sir, with missus's compulments," grinned the girl, wildly elated by her momentary distinction.

To her intense delight, this last sally caused a giggle among the loafers. She edged nearer to the barbed wire fencing, to prolong this truly delightful conversation; and for a minute or two, idiotic questions and answers pattered across the farm boundary, while Bert's brow grew blacker and blacker.

Suddenly a silence, instant and deep, fell on the gathering. The Kaffir girl scuttled behind a shed with noiseless celerity. From the door of the farm issued two people—Tante Wilma, the Englishman's Boer wife, and striding beside her corpulent bulk, the slim, energetic figure of Carol Mayne, the English mission priest in charge of the station. Tante Wilma wore her most repulsive expression, her sandy eyebrows lowering over her cunning little eyes. Ten years ago she had been a handsome woman, in a redundant style; but six children and an invalid husband had reduced her form to shapelessness and her temper to rags and tatters.

She hated the English cleric, and could not bear that he should come and see her husband. The Boer Predikant would have sat and sympathised with her over his coffee for a couple of hours after his professional visit to the sick man. Carol Mayne never seemed to have an adequate idea of the importance of this woman, who owned half Slabbert's Poort, and had married her English overseer, a widower with a little girl of his own.

She was evidently accompanying the young man from the house much against her will. About half way across the yard, becoming perhaps aware of the audience at the gate, the clergyman halted, just out of earshot. He seemed earnestly recommending some particular course of conduct to Mrs. Lutwyche, who stood sullenly before him, hostility in every line of her coarse face.

The group of men at the gate dropped away silently, singly or in pairs, avoiding the parson; and Bert was left alone, his sullen scowl fixed upon the house, as though willing it to render up the face he had stood there for hours longing to see.

After a while, Mr. Mayne, having finished his colloquy with Tante Wilma, lifted his hat with that unconscious English University manner which had piqued her in her husband, but which now she hated as only the ignorant can hate the thing that they can never understand. The young Englishman's parting salutation, delivered so entirely as a matter of course, belonged to an order of things which, had she been able, Tante Wilma would have destroyed, ravaged, trampled under her gross feet.

She stood glowering upon him as he made straight for the gate by which Bert still lounged. And she was pleased to note that the young man made no effort to open it for his passage.

"Good evening, Mestaer!" said Mr. Mayne, as he reached the gate. "How's the world treating you?"

"I'm —— if I care how it treats me," was the engaging response.

The smile that passed over Mayne's face was particularly humorous and winning.

"Don't care came to a bad end," he said, "and that's what I particularly hope won't happen to you. Are you going my way?"

"No; I'm staying here, if you're so mighty curious to know my plans," was the answer, given with a discourtesy so studied that to notice it would be to allow the speaker to fancy that he had "scored."

The rudeness must, of course, have been obvious to the priest, but he disregarded it entirely. A smile again flickered over his face, as of one who holds a trump card. "Well, then, good-night!" he said briskly, opening the gate at once, and passing through it with an air of having no time to waste.

Bert cast another look at the silent house. Nobody was in sight but the big Boer woman slouching back to the doorway. He lowered the point of his rapier, so to speak.

"Say—how's he goin' on?" he asked.

Mr. Mayne at once dropped his appearance of hurry, and closed the gate slowly.

"Well," he said, "he's just lingering. It may last two or three weeks yet. God help him!"

Bert beat his clenched fist softly on the top bar of the gate.

"Look here!" he burst out, as if the words were torn from him, "they let you go in and out—you can tell—you oughter know. Is she givin' that girl hell?"

"I think things are going on much as they have done this last six months," said Mayne, speaking reluctantly.

"But what'll it be when he's gone? I ask you that? What kind of a life's she goin' to lead then?"

Mayne hesitated. "I don't know," he said at length, with a touch of reserve.

"You know how the she-devil hates her," hissed Bert. "She won't keep her, never fear. She'll chuck her out to any of these blanked scum around the town, and then say the girl's disgraced her, and she'll have no more to do with her! I know Tante Wilma!"

Mayne looked keenly and kindly at the excited speaker. He was sorry for him, from the bottom of his heart; but what to say he did not know, without betraying confidence.

"I think you see things in too black a light," he said at last. "Mrs. Lutwyche is not without a sense of duty, though we know she is not good-tempered. And Millie is not friendless, nor incapable of taking her own part."

Bert lifted his leonine head, and pointed with a gesture of his hand towards the house.

"He told me, with his blanky British pride, that he'd sooner see her in her coffin than married to a man with an ounce of Boer blood in him—him that let a Boer woman marry him," he growled. "He knows my mother was English; I told him. I'd take care of her."

Mr. Mayne was able to follow the trend of the jerky, disconnected sentences.

"Millie's young yet to think of marriage," he said.

"She'll have to think about something worse, before he's cold in his grave, or I'm much mistaken," said Bert, scowling.

The clergyman pondered.

"Do you want me to speak to her father for you?" he presently asked, point-blank.

Bert hesitated; he grew red, then pale.

"Don't like to be beholden to me, do you?" said Mayne cheerfully. "Well, I sympathise with you. But you and I are just walking round the question, you know, Mestaer. The whole point is, what does Millie say? Will she have you?"

The colour again rushed over the crestfallen face of Bert. "Gals like that don' know what they want," he grunted.

"Then it would be very wrong to push her into a life-long contract."

"She don' know what's good for her," repeated Bert. "She'd oughter be arranged for; that's the way to do it. She'd not repent it if she married me."

"Well, look here; I'll make a bargain. If Millie comes to me and says she's willing to marry you, I'll speak to Mr. Lutwyche; but you know quite as well as I do, he would never hear of it against her will."

Hereupon Bert damned first British pride, then his own Boer ancestry, then Tante Wilma, who had caused her husband to contemn all Boers for her sake.

"Swear-words won't help your cause, be sure of that," observed Mayne drily. "English girls aren't going to be won that way."

"Think I'd say words like that to her?"

"More than probably. Well, good-night! I'm due at the Mission; not coming, are you?"

"No," breathed Bert, and said no more; for his eyes were fixed upon a little shadowy figure, moving under the shadow of the stoep.

Mayne saw it too, and walked quietly away.

CHAPTER II
MILLIE

"The world was right when it called you thin."
—ROBERT BROWNING.

The sun had dropped, as the red billiard ball slips into the pocket, suddenly behind the heaving mass of veldt. Darkness was advancing with tropical, seven-leagued stride, and all things were grey.

The pale figure detached itself from the shadows, and resolved itself into the advancing form of a frail, undeveloped girl of fifteen or sixteen. A strange eye would have been lost in wonder, at the first glance, as to what Bert Mestaer could see here, on which to fix his turbulent affections.

His lady-love was skinny, hollow-chested, stooping and round-backed; her arms were almost like sticks.

She wore a soiled calico gown, too long behind for its length in front. Her pale-coloured hair was drawn off her white face, and plaited into an untidy pig tail which hung down her back. Certain small wisps of it escaped in front, and made what looked in the dim light like the rudiments of a nimbus about her head. She was drawn down on one side by the weight of the heavy, clanking, copper bucket which she carried.

The well was right across the yard, quite near the gate where Bert stood, and his large person was very visible; but the girl came on with no sign that she saw him; and, reaching the well, hooked her bucket on the chain, and let it down, with a stony, expressionless countenance.

Bert leaned over the gate; the expression of his face had altered completely.

"Millie," he said, below his breath, "Millie!"

She gave him a listless glance, from weary, heavy-lidded, dark-blue eyes.

"Oh, good evening!" she said curtly.

He unlatched the gate, came through, and took the windlass out of her hand.

"Thought you promised not to come inside," she remarked.

"Only jest ter wind up this"—perhaps the thought of Mayne and the swear-words flitted across his mind, for he pulled up short, and merely finished lamely with—"this 'ere bucket."

"What's an ear-bucket?" asked Miss Lutwyche, with cold contempt.

He winced like a child from a cane, but made no retort, merely setting all his finely developed muscles a-play, as he raised the gleaming bucket from the depths. When it was at the top, he paused.

"How's he to-night, Millie?"

"Mean my father?"

"Yes, Mr. Lutwyche."

"Oh, same's usual."

Bert's chest heaved with the burden of all he wished to say, and dare not. Some instinct, deep down in him, warned him not to speak to the girl of her father's fast-approaching end. And yet—he thought of all that Mayne had said! Now was his chance, if ever, to declare his passion. He wondered whether Mayne, or anybody else, knew how distant were the terms between him and Millie, what an impregnable barrier she stood behind, how far he was from being on such a footing as might be supposed to immediately precede a proposal of marriage. His tongue clave to the roof of his mouth, and he felt the sweat break out upon him.

The girl moved, leaned over to detach the bucket from the hook. He started, and reaching quickly forward, brought it down upon the side of the well where he stood.

"I'm goin' to carry it indoors for you," he said sheepishly.

She turned, without a word of thanks, and began to walk back to the house.

He strode beside her, in the gathering gloom, his whole being aching with the desire to comfort her.

"Millie," he said at last, "if—if she does anythin' to yer—if she gets too bad, or lays hands upon yer, you jest come to me, or send for me, won't yer?"

The girl let fall a laugh of such quiet scorn that he felt openly sneered at.

"D'you think I'm afraid of her, then?" she asked.

"No," he said warmly; "you've got the pluck of the—" he checked and almost choked—"the pluck of a dozen. But she's stronger than you."

"Is she?" said Millie drily.

He pondered on that answer.

There spoke the careless insolence of the Briton. He admired it, while he writhed under it; but he understood why it made Tante Wilma want to scratch her eyes out.

They had reached the stoep. Nobody was about. He set down the bucket and faced her squarely.

"Millie," he almost gasped, "look here! Give me a word! You know I'd——"

She broke in. "I got no time to talk. I must take this water inside. Good-night!"

His choler rose. "A chap may do what he will for you, and you can't even throw him a word!"

Her languid expression changed; the dark blue eyes flashed wide awake in the twilight.

"I didn't understand you wanted to be paid for carrying the pail!"

"Oh, damn you!" cried Bert, hurt beyond endurance; and he flung away in rage that was not far from tears.

It seemed that the moment he was gone, the girl forgot him utterly. She turned away and went inside the sitkamer without a backward glance.

The sitkamer was full of her father's half-Boer children: two great boys of eight and nine years old, and three or four younger fry. They were rolling about on the floor, playing, fighting and cuffing. Millie took no more notice of them than if they had been mice or black-beetles. She filled the kettle from her pail, and set it to boil, and then, going to a cupboard, got a fresh egg, which she proceeded to whisk up in a tumbler, with delicate care.

Tante Wilma rolled into the room, sat down by the stove, took the coffee-pot off the rack, and poured herself out a cupful, which she proceeded liberally to "lace" with something stronger. She sat sipping it, looking furtively at her step-daughter as she moved, her small face grimly set, noiselessly to and fro. It is very rarely indeed that a Boer woman takes to drink. When she does, she becomes a creature to be avoided.

When her arrangements were complete, Millie took the tray and went out of the room, followed by malevolent glances.

"White rat!" growled Xante Wilma, in the Taal.

The children started a kind of chorus:

"White rat! White rat!
Ours is the corn that makes you fat!"

"Not much longer then," muttered the half-tipsy Vrouw. "Another week or two will see the end of it now; and then—out she goes! Aha! She'll wish before long that she had kept a civil tongue in her head. As sure as I'm a living woman, one thrashing I'll give her before she goes! Oh, there's a long account I've got against her—it wants paying, that it does! Much we've had to bear from him, but most from her that encouraged him from a baby to defy me. But I'll take it out on her, once he's gone, the little insolent, English devil!"

CHAPTER III
THE RIVALS

"But as if he loved you! No, not he.
Nor anyone else in the world, 'tis plain;
Who ever heard that another, free
As I, young, prosperous, sound and sane,
Poured life out, proffered it—'Half a glance
Of those eyes of yours, and I drop the glass!'"
—ROBERT BROWNING.

Bert Mestaer flung open the door of his farm kitchen, and strode in.

All was clean and quiet. His supper, covered up in a saucepan, had been left on the stove. Anna, his Boer housekeeper, had long since retired to her heavy slumbers.

The eye of the master roved round the kitchen that night, like one who saw it for the first time. He gazed upon the ceiling, and noted that it needed fresh lime-wash. He contemplated the shining rows of plates on the dresser, as though taking a new pride in his possessions; and then, moving forward, he pushed open a door at the opposite side of the room, and found himself in darkness and coolness. He struck a light, held it to a candle on the table, and his critical glance travelled round the parlour which had been his mother's pride.

There was a piano; he had a dim memory of her sitting there, playing to him, the hymns that had charmed her own English childhood—

"Once in Royal David's city—"

the sound of the tune floated across the brain which for so long had heard no such strains. He saw himself, a boy with yellow curls, in which she had delighted, lifting his piercing childish treble at her bidding. What would she not have given for the English Mission which had come to Slabbert's Poort since her death, and the ministrations of Carol Mayne! Bert had not entered a church now, for years. As he stood by her silent piano, he was invaded by a vague feeling that he could hardly expect a neglected God to take his part.

The room contained an old bureau and comfortable chairs. There were good engravings on the walls. The carpet was still serviceable, and there were clean curtains in the windows. From the wall before him smiled down his mother's frank, good-humoured face—the face of Alice Brooke—a brave girl, who had earned her living among strangers in a strange land, until the rich Boer farmer had persuaded her to be his wife. Beside her, the broad-bearded, benevolent face of her devoted husband, a Boer of the best type.

Bert folded his arms, and gazed at them both, with a heart full of curious longings, rebellions and regrets. Mrs. Mestaer had died when he was eight years old. Her death was the result of an accident—a runaway horse had cut short the happy life on that out-of-the-way farm; and people said that Mestaer had never rallied from the shock. He became an old man in a few short months. He turned a deaf ear to those who urged him to take some expansive Boer lady to look after him and his motherless boy, and he died of pneumonia when Bert was seventeen, seeming only too glad of the chance to be gone.

Bert did not remember feeling much grief when he was told of his father's death. He had been chiefly conscious of the excitement of leaving school and coming home to take possession of his property, and ruffle it in the streets of Slabbert's Poort.

Just at that time had come the diamond-finding craze, which changed the little rural hamlet into a haunt of needy adventurers, gamblers and sharpers, Slabbert's Poort was to be the new Kimberley. The usual influx of rabble followed; the usual mad period of wild speculation. To let off big portions of his land to speculators had seemed to young Mestaer far more "sporting" than to continue stolidly to farm the precious acres. He chummed in with the prospectors, who were only too ready to flatter a young fellow with money in his pockets. The result was that his proper business languished; and now it was universally allowed that the diamond-bearing capacities of the locality had been absurdly over estimated.

Bert had fallen into ways which would have wrung his mother's heart, when, for good or ill, the white face of Millie crossed his horizon, to remain as a fixed star in his heavens.

To-night he was beginning to realise all that it might have meant for him if his mother had lived. She was English; she would have understood and befriended Millie; she would have told him the things that English girls demand of their lovers, and have devised ways in which the acquaintance might be encouraged.

There was not, as it happened, a solitary English-woman in the place. Mayne, at the Mission, was a bachelor, so could not be used as a chaperon. Millie had never seen the interior of Bert's house in her life. He felt sure that if she could see the rooms made comfortable by his English mother, it must to her seem preferable to her own miserable quarters. She only saw him slouching about the streets, in the unkempt condition affected by his pals; she took him, he felt sure, for other than he was, or than he felt himself capable of becoming for her sake.

Remorsefully he remembered that Millie had seen him drunk. He had not cared at the time—the thing was growing far too fashionable to be looked upon as a disgrace in the little place which had been so pastoral—but love was teaching him strange things, and now he felt as though he were looking upon the sordid episode of drunkenness through Millie's tired, contemptuous eyes.

What would he not have given to be able to make her understand that, if she would be kind to him, he would be what she chose—to be able to show her the clean, peaceful farm, known throughout the district as High Farm, owing to its being the only house for miles which was built English fashion on two floors—and tell her that, if she would be mistress there, he would use all his vast strength to work as never man worked before, and keep her like a lady?

But how to get at her? He felt that any written expression of his desires would be ludicrously inadequate. At one time he thought of begging Mayne to speak for him; but his pride jibbed too violently at the notion of having to confess that he lacked courage to speak. His heart was heavy as lead. Four times since his last strikingly unsatisfactory interview he had hung over the gate in vain. Each evening it was Kattie the Kaffir girl who had been sent to draw the water; and he was too proud to send a message by her.

But on the fourth night he had yielded to unbearable longing, and entrusted the grinning damsel with a note for Millie—a folded scrap of paper, on which he had written:

"Do let me have a word. I'm so blamed sorry I said that to you. "BERT."

He had some self-questionings as to whether "blamed" might be looked upon as a swear-word; but he decided that it must be harmless.

"If you don't say that, dashed if I know what you could say," he reflected irritably.

His heart beat insufferably as he watched the girl stagger across the yard, the pail in one hand, the little note in the other.

Strange thrills crept through his nerves, his breath seemed to trouble him as he drew it If Millie herself should come in answer, what should he say to her? He was all unprepared.

A shadowy figure was stealing towards him stealthily in the gathering gloom. It was slim—it moved quietly. He grew crimson in the dark. An unmistakable Kaffir chuckle broke on his ear: it was only Kattie back again. She handed him a piece of paper and ran away in an instant He struck a match and looked eagerly at what he held: it was just his own message, crumpled up and returned without comment.

He had been enraged, but not daunted for long. It was highly possible that Tante Wilma had got hold of the message, and that Millie had never seen it. The thing now was to invent some new plan of campaign—some scheme by which the plenty and good plenishing of his home might burst upon the vision of the girl.

To-night he set down the kerosene lamp upon the table, which had a serge cover of a good shade of blue. He surveyed the well-upholstered sofa, with silk cushions of the same blue. He tried, with doubled fist, the springs of the deep easy-chair. He stared at the tall glass vases and glazed pots, and dimly recalled the fact that in his mother's lifetime these had been wont to hold flowers. A girl would like, perhaps, to see flowers in a room. He believed there were some in the yard; but he paid no attention to them, and never gathered any. A deep sigh escaped him at the thought of his inability to cope with the situation in general.

He strolled back with his lamp into the tiled kitchen.

Should he consult Amurrica? The Yankee was the only one of all the set for whom he entertained anything but a profound and steady contempt. And Amurrica was, he knew, untrustworthy. He had a secret fear—which brought the blood to his head when he considered it—that Amurrica himself was "on to Millie." It was possible that the Lutwyches might consider an American more akin to themselves than the son of a Boer. Even as he turned the delicate subject over and over in his thoughts, there came a tap at his door, and a long whistle, which told him that the man who occupied his thoughts stood upon his threshold.

He went and opened, standing aside as the visitor sauntered in, and manifesting no curiosity as to the reason of so late a call. Amurrica shut the door carefully behind him, and walked to the clean hearth. His face was of the hatchet variety, not handsome, but keen, with that eagle keenness which is the hall-mark of a certain type of American. The humour in his half-closed hazel eyes atoned for their lack of size; the composure of his manner hid his real thoughts from sight. Bert had never before considered him formidable, but to-night he was conscious of a foreboding as he mechanically produced the whisky-jar from a corner cupboard, and pushed it across the table. Amurrica sat down.

His eye roved around restless until it lighted upon the spittoon in the corner by the hearth. He made his shot with precision, and then, laying his pipe on the table, began to pour whisky into a tumbler.

"'S come at last," he observed.

"What?" asked Bert, slouching in his chair, his listless eyes on the fading red glimmer between the bars of the stove.

Amurrica shifted slightly in his seat, so as to face his host squarely. He took a pull at his whisky before replying casually:

"Lutwyche is cuttin' the stick."

There was silence. Bert knew he was being watched; felt instinctively that the time had come. With no other word spoken, he knew that they were rivals; that it would be perhaps a question of which man was prepared to give most to the Boer step-mother for the attainment of what he desired. He must feign indifference; for aught he knew, Amurrica might have his shooting-iron in his pocket.

He had no personal fear of him; his fears were all for Millie. His love was teaching him stratagem.

His eyelids did not flicker, he did not even remove his pipe from his mouth. Amurrica's eyes were boring him like gimlets, but he puffed calmly on, his thoughts racing each other over the well-known ground. What was he to do?

"Who told you?" he presently vouchsafed.

"Met Boka, galloping for the doctor like the very devil."

Boka was one of Lutwyche's Kaffirs.

Bert asked no question, manifested no curiosity; but the other was full of news, and intent upon imparting it.

"Said the gal had made him sleep in the kitchen nights, for a week past, 'n case she needed to call him up. To-night, down she come with a face like chalk, and told him to ride like hell: said he judged by the looks of her the ole man was gone already."

Again there was a silence, while both smoked. Bert presently spoke—two words:

"Mayne there?"

"Mayne? Not that I know of." A surprised inflection in the voice.

"Then I think," said Mestaer, slowly rising to his full height, and knocking his pipe against the chimney, to dislodge the dottle—"I think I'd better go an' send him."

"What's the blank good of that?" cried Amurrica, in a choice outburst of astonished profanity.

"Parson's the right man when it comes to dyin', ain't he?" said Bert tranquilly. "An' you done right to come an' tell me, Amurrica, for I'm the man who's concerned in this. I thank you. Put yourself outside o' that whisky, an' I'll make so free as to turn you out."

He was moving quietly about the room as he spoke, opening drawers, and Amurrica saw him slip a revolver into his pocket.

The Yankee sat for a minute with a frozen face, digesting his plans. Then he stood up, and his features relaxed towards a smile.

"Well, here's luck!" he said, draining his glass.

"Thanks!" said Bert

He approached the table, and took the empty glass, as though to carry it away; but as he moved, it slipped through his fingers, and fell in shivers upon the floor. Amurrica's nostrils twitched: was it an accident? Bert said "Damn!" quite naturally, and kicked the fragments with his foot. A second time his visitor decided, upon reflection, not to quarrel; and they left the house together.

CHAPTER IV
THE GUARDIANSHIP OF CAROL MAYNE

"These mothers are too dreadful!"
—ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

Millie sat before the cold hearth in the stale, stuffy sitkamer, which always smelt of dirty dish-cloths and unwashed humanity. Her lips were pressed tightly together, her face was white as wax. In its repose, one could see signs of the inner strength, the unnameable charm which had captivated Bert and Amurrica, beyond question the two cleverest men of the place. No young Boer would have looked twice at her.

Her father was dead. The doctor had come and gone, and told the orphan what she knew before. The death had been quiet and painless, only Millie there. But now, the Boer widow was beside the corpse, noisily weeping and wailing, and the girl was shut out.

It was perhaps a fortunate thing for Arnold Lutwyche that his inherent vacillation of character had been joined to a feebleness of constitution which released him, at the age of forty-two, from the burden of the flesh. He had passed beyond reach of the Boer woman's tongue, and of the complications presented by those lumpish Boer children who bore his name. His difficulties were over; but what of his child?

His first wife—his own love, and Millie's mother—had been the earthly stay of the weak soul. Everyone had always called him weak; but he had had the wisdom to love the strong, the fortune to be loved by her again. While she lived, his own lack of stamina had hardly been apparent to him. He had never quite lost his sense of having a grudge against God since her death.

What he had been through since! From the moment when the handsome, courteous Englishman, with the dark-blue eyes, presented himself in answer to an advertisement from the buxom Boer heiress for a competent man to manage her farm, his misery had increased, his bonds had tightened. But it was over at last. He had slipped through Tante Wilma's coarse fingers, and gone flying home to her, his love, his stronghold.

Their child was left behind.

She had apparently no tears for him. The look on her tense features was more triumphant than grieving.

A smart tap on the door aroused her. She looked up in languid surprise. The old Dutch clock pointed to three o'clock in the morning. With a resigned shrug, she lifted her aching limbs, dragged herself to the door, and opened it. Mr. Mayne stood outside, and stepped in without speaking, closely followed by Bert Mestaer. Millie drew back, a look of anything but welcome on her expressive face.

"Go back!" said she to the young farmer. "I don't want you round here, nor any of your lot."

"I—I came to see if I couldn't help, Millie." stammered he humbly.

In dialogue with the girl he seemed always to become a different creature. To-night there was some apparent difficulty in articulating, as his eyes rested on the untamed fire of the glance, and the droop of the small, exhausted frame.

"Let him come in and rest a minute, Miss Lutwyche," said Mr. Mayne gently. "He came all the way to the Mission to let me know."

"How'd he hear, I should like to know?" she demanded.

"Amurrica told me," stammered Bert, staring at the ground.

She gave a short laugh.

"Trust him to know other folks' business," she sneered. "He's the old woman's candidate, he is."

"Candidate? What for, Millie?" asked Mayne anxiously.

She had turned away, and Bert had fastened the door. She sank on a chair, leaning an arm on the table, the slenderness of her wrist, as it lay there, making a dumb appeal to all the manliness in Bert.

"For taking me off her hands," she said, with perfect calmness. "I'm on offer, didn't you know? Either o' you two in the running? Amurrica's given her ten quid on account; you'd better bet on his chances, unless you can go higher."

"That's not the way to talk," said Mayne sternly. "What do you mean by it? You are far too young to think of marriage."

"Who said I was thinkin' about marriage?" she flashed back. "Am I the old woman? Am I to answer for her dirty bargains?"

"Then tell us what you mean," said Mayne. "Is it true that Otis wants to marry you?"

Otis was Amurrica's patronymic.

"I don' know," said Millie casually. "I only know he's pretty thick with the old woman; an' she doesn't mean to let me go for nothing; all of you can bet on that."

"But why talk this nonsense?" urged Mayne reprovingly. "Mrs. Lutwyche couldn't dispose of you against your will, even if you were a Kaffir."

Milly laughed—one clear, liquid note.

"No, of course she can't," said she. "That's where the joke comes in. Think I'd go along o' that sort o' scum?"

She indicated poor Bert with a slight wave of that fragile wrist.

"Then what are you goin' to do, Millie?" burst out the young man in anguish. "If she turns you out, where're you goin'—eh?"

"What's it matter to you?" asked Millie sullenly.

"'S the only thing that does matter to me!" cried Bert desperately. "Look here!" He flung his hat on the table, and stepped in front of her with a sudden manliness which filled Mayne with admiration. "You don' know the sort of home I've got to offer you, Millie. I'm a rich man, as things go round here. I'd give yer pretty well anything you set your heart on. I'd take care of yer—yer shouldn't set them bits of hands to no rough work. I love you, Millie, and well you know it. Let the parson here marry us, an I'll—I'll do anything you want!"

He knelt down by the table as he concluded his appeal, and made a snatch for her hand; but it was sharply withdrawn. He laid his arms down on the rough wood, and hid his face in them, shaken through and through by the intensity of his feelings. Mayne turned away, and walked to the far end of the kitchen. But he heard the girl's short laugh of scorn.

"Tastes differ," she said icily. "I'm an English girl, and if the worst comes to the worst, there's the well in the courtyard. That's better than a drinkin' Boer."

"Millie," said Mayne, in wrath, "I am ashamed of you! Is that the way to answer an honest man, who offers you all he has to give? I am as English as you are, and I beg to say no Englishwoman I ever knew offered insult as a return for honour done her. If you can't feel affection for Bert, surely you could tell him so civilly."

The girl's fragile form quivered with dry sobs; she sprang to her feet.

"Mr. Mestaer, I can't and don't return your affection," she gasped. "I'm brought pretty low, but I've got my pride! I'm thinkin' just now more about funerals than about weddin's, though a black frock for me'll be as hard to fi-f-find as a white one would, I'm thinkin'!"

"There!" cried Bert to Mayne, in hot indignation. "You made her cry now. Millie, my dear, now don't you give it a thought. I didn't know it 'ud vex you! ... Millie!"

But she had staggered blindly down the room, not seeing her way for the streaming tears so long so unnaturally restrained; and as Bert stood hesitating, torn between his pity, his anger, his passion—the door of the kitchen opened slowly, and the new-made widow appeared on the threshold, truly awful in her déshabille.

"A clever girl, I'll warrant!" she cried, in high glee. "Her father not cold yet, and two young men in the kitchen at four o'clock in the morning! Well, what offers, gentlemen? Either of you ready to take her off my hands?"

"I am," burst in Bert at once, before Mayne could speak. "Fifty pounds down and a demi-john of the best whisky in Slabbert's Poort, and I'll make her my wife to-morrow."

"Millie!" screamed the virago to the girl, who had reached the ladder leading to her little room above. "Here's a husband for you, my girl! Get your bundle and pack! Off with you! Out of my house! We're all respectable here! Take your English lady-wife, Mr. Bert Mestaer."

Mr. Mayne stepped forwards.

"Perhaps you would be so kind as to listen to me for a moment, Mrs. Lutwyche," he said distinctly. "Your late husband made a will, and left it in my hands. In it I am appointed his daughter's sole guardian, until she reaches the age of twenty-one. The arrangements for her future rest with me, and have nothing whatever to do with you. If she remains with you for a week or two, until her affairs are settled, you will be paid a fixed sum daily, out of Mr. Lutwyche's small estate, as long as you keep her. But you have absolutely no control whatever over her marriage."

Vrouw Lutwyche gave a positive howl of fury. Her face grew purple—almost black; her eyes protruded, her rage was hideous and ungovernable. For so long had she waited for this moment—this coming time when she should have Millie helpless at her mercy—she simply could not realise that all was taken out of her hands.

Millie's tears had ceased. In surprise at what Mr. Mayne was saying, she had halted on her way up the ladder, the drops wet on her cheeks. Now she slowly came back to the ground, and stood with a set smile, showing her row of short, pearl-white teeth, as she gloated over the spectacle of the Boer woman's degradation. He had been weak, that father who had left her; he had disappointed her over and over again; but after all, there had been something in him which Vrouw Lutwyche could not reach. In death he had outwitted her.

Mayne's very soul sickened. He had seen much that revolted him in this wild land of beginnings—of that measure of civilisation which sometimes seems so strongly to plead the fact that utter savagery would be better. But he thought he had never seen anything more awful than the enmity of this girl's face—the hatred, the callous contempt, which showed how often the young eyes had looked upon like scenes.

"If she is left here, she will go mad," he thought; and again he earnestly wished that poor Lutwyche could have held on just another fortnight, until the arrival of certain letters from England. He was at his wits' end. There was not a house anywhere near to which he dare take Millie. He was in sole charge of the Mission, and in that evil place, to take her there, would be to blast her character. He thought of a good-natured old Boer widow woman who lived about a mile away, and stepping up to Millie, he suggested in an undertone, that she should go there.

"You cannot remain here," he urged.

Her refusal was prompt and resolute.

"Leave him alone in the house with her? Never!" she said doggedly. "You don't know what she might do. I'm not afraid of her. She daren't touch me, and she can't go up my ladder. She's roaring drunk now, but she'll be dead drunk presently, and then she's harmless. If you come round in the morning, I shall be able to talk to you; she'll take hours to sleep this off. I wish you'd go now, and take away that Bert. I've got no use for him."

CHAPTER V
A BOER BURYING

"—Within some glass, dimmed by our breath,
Our hearts discern wild images of Death,
Shadows and shoals that edge Eternity."
—DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.

The sunrise flashed into their eyes, as the farm-house door closed upon the two men. They went together through the yard, and out at the gate where Bert had so often watched in vain for Millie. Their steps echoed with an unfamiliar ring upon the hard, caked earth at this unwonted hour of stark, raw dawn. The sight of the well gave Bert a twinge as he passed it.

"Even that 'ud be better than a drinkin' Boer," he muttered, under his breath.

Before they had gone much farther, he grappled with the new fear that was clutching at his heart.

"I say," he growled, stopping and planting himself before Mr. Mayne, who of necessity stopped also; "what did you mean by what you said up there about letters from England? She—she hasn't got friends in England, has she?"

"It is very doubtful," said Mayne hesitatingly. "Look here, Mestaer!" he added abruptly. "My hand was forced just now. You were not supposed to hear what I said. Can I trust you not to repeat it?"

"Repeat it! Who'd I repeat it to?"

"Otis; or any of your lot."

"My lot! That's her cry too. Has she learnt it from you? Do you lump me in with Amurrica's crew of thievin' idlers? —— them all for a set of ——"

Mayne's hand went up with the slight gesture which always stopped Bert's swearing.

"Mestaer," he said, "after what we have just seen, you will drop your fancy for Millie, won't you? There are girls who will play with a man's love to the very brink of the end; but if a girl has any sort of feeling for a man, she will turn to him in her trouble. Millie doesn't care for you—you must see that, don't you?"

Bert looked as though he had been suddenly turned into a graven image. Meeting the squareness of his jaw, the metallic glint of his hard grey eye, Mayne was conscious anew of the dreadful strength of undisciplined human nature, and the imperious quality of its desires. One is sometimes apt to wonder what twenty centuries of Christianity have done for Europe. The answer to the question stares you in the face the moment you step outside the circle in which Christianity has insensibly moulded public opinion.

"If she don't want me, she don't want no other man," said the giant doggedly; "and look how young she is. I've got patience; I can wait. But if she's going to be taken off to England—"

He broke off, and began to walk on.

"If she is going away to England?" repeated Mayne, trudging beside him.

"Why, then, I don't know as how I can."

Mayne thought rapidly for a minute.

"You're not reasonable," he said. "You own that Millie's too young to be married; but you wouldn't have her stay in Vrouw Lutwyche's clutches, would you?"

"The worse they treat her, the more likely she is to come to me," said Bert calmly.

"Or to Otis."

"Chuck it!" burst out Bert hoarsely. "Chuck it, I tell you." He shook with all the inward feelings which he could not explain. How could he say that it scorched him with sheer physical heat and shame, to hear Amurrica even suggested as a mate for Millie? "He'd poison her soul," he groaned; and Mayne felt an acute inward sympathy with him.

"Mestaer," he said kindly. "It seems very doubtful whether any of the English relations of Millie's mother will be willing—or if willing, able to receive her. Her father has left in my hands a little sum of money—very small, but enough to pay her passage home. It appears that the family of the first Mrs. Lutwyche all disapproved of her marriage. They are poor proud people, and as he has had no communication with them since her death, I do not even know whether his letter will reach them. If however they do write, and if they offer to have the girl home, on any terms, you have the sense to see that she most certainly ought to go."

"Perhaps she won't go. Who's goin' to make her?"

"I am her guardian," said Mayne, very quietly.

"If you try an' make her do anything she don't wanter, I'll choke you with my own hands," said Bert earnestly.

The priest was unable to help smiling.

"Mestaer, if you had lived in other days, you would have been a devout lover," he said. "As it is, you are a bit of a barbarian, are you not?"

"A drinkin' Boer; that's it, if you want to do any classifying," retorted the young man, with exceeding bitterness; and with no parting salutation, he flung off, turned the corner leading to the High Farm, and marched away, leaving Mayne to pursue the road to the Mission alone.

The news he had heard was working like some stimulating drug in the young farmer's brain. The fatal word "England" lit up the future in one long, awful glare, as of an endless avenue along which he seemed to see himself moving—alone. Surely there was something that a strong man could do to chain a girl's affections! What charm can lead a spirit captive? Bert knew well enough, though he never said so to himself in set terms, not being by way of analysing his emotions—he knew that it was Millie's self, her love, her soul, her inmost being, that he longed for. If he could make her long for him as he longed for her! He thought of the cold, white face and little delicate, sneering mouth till he was half mad.

The only plan of campaign which suggested itself was the simple one of being always on hand. He felt pretty sure, in his own mind, that the girl's stepmother would try to get even with her somehow. Her prey was to be snatched out of her hands; it would be odd if she made no attempt to revenge herself. The girl knew no fear; she had successfully cowed and defied the bullying woman for years. But Bert, with Boer intuitions in his blood, felt that she was less secure than she thought herself. It was truly British to despise an adversary; but it was a British mistake, sometimes. The kind of hate that Tante Wilma felt was hate that would improve with keeping.

Accordingly, Bert passed the next day or two in mounting guard in the immediate neighbourhood. There were various outbuildings which made it easy to hang about unseen, and he went to his post before Otis and the others were about.

On the first day, life at the farm went on much as usual. As Millie had foreseen, Tante Wilma was not visible. Various Boer ladies of her acquaintance came to condole, and discuss the purchase of widow's mourning. Mayne came and saw Millie, and gave her the money to supply her own black dress, which she sat up all night to make. There was no need for Bert to wait about when once he had seen the light of the candle in the little square patch of glass in the corrugated iron roof that lighted Millie's garret. In that fastness she was safe—safe among the coffins.[[1]]

[[1]] In remote Boer districts, a coffin or two is frequently kept in the loft, ready for emergencies. Apples and fruit for winter use are sometimes stored in these weird receptacles.

Amurrica came not near the farm all that day. Perhaps it had leaked out that the Vrouw was not in a fit state for the conduct of negotiations.

The next day the vigilant lover patiently returned to his post, and waited until dark. Millie was all right, so far, for a Boer woman had been all day long plying her needle at the farm, and the pallid, unwholesome little man who fulfilled the profitable duties of undertaker to the community had been shuffling in and out all day. Moreover, the girl herself had appeared in the yard, and been occupied there for more than an hour in hanging out wet linen, unconscious that she was watched from behind the thick hedge of prickly pear which enclosed the orchard, with its haze of peach blossom. Bert made no sign of his presence. He had determined now upon his role, and adhered to it with characteristic persistency. His plan was to bide his time, and come on the scene when Millie needed a champion. Her extremity was to be his opportunity.

About nine o'clock, Amurrica stepped briskly up to the stoep, and was admitted by Millie herself. The sentinel, much excited, stood by, every muscle tense, in view of emergencies. At the end of about three minutes, the square of candle-light appeared in the roof, gladdening the lover's heart. Millie had retired to her stronghold, out of reach of importunity. He determined to stand his ground, however, until the departure of Otis. The sound of raised voices was soon heard. No doubt Amurrica was demanding the return of his "ten quid," and demanding it of course in vain. It must have come in very handy for the purchase of the funeral garb and bake-meats. He did not stay very long. The invisible Bert studied his countenance as he emerged, but as was usual with him, there was not much to be learnt from it. It was non-committal. Bert, as he strolled home, fell to imagining what his next move was likely to be.

During the whole of the third day, four women were ceaselessly at work upon the solid feast which was to conclude the obsequies of Arnold Lutwyche, in a manner befitting the importance and position of his widow. The kitchen was a scene of bustle, excitement, constant coming and going. Bert wondered how Millie stood it. Tante Wilma, the centre of attraction, kept meritoriously sober during all this exciting period, and Bert knew that the girl was safe, at least from physical violence, while all these people were about.

Next day, the funeral took place. It happened to be the first Boer funeral that Carol Mayne had ever seen; and he found himself unprepared for it. From early dawn the cape carts and slow waggons kept coming in from all the country-side. He did not at first divine that all these people were come solely to attend the funeral. The Pieters family, to which Tante Wilma belonged, was the leading clan of the district; and before noon at least two hundred were assembled, some of them having come distances of thirty or forty miles for the sake of being present.

When he arrived at Lutwyche's, the ceremony of viewing the corpse was in active process. Just to the left of the stoep, before you entered the sitkamer, was a small room, the function of which seemed indeterminate. Here, in one of the coffins which had for so long borne Millie company in her loft, lay the dead Englishman, his face still uncovered. By his side, as master of the ceremonies, stood the widow's senior male cousin, Cornells Pieters, a typical Boer, with a reputation for beating his wife. His fluent Taal was not very comprehensible to Mayne; but a sick disgust came over him at the way in which he was, as it were, acting showman—stroking back the dead man's hair, pushing or poking his hands or cheeks with great stumpy fingers, and encouraging the never-ending stream of gazers to handle the corpse and finger the linen. A great laugh would go up if some young woman or child made outcry at the unexpected coldness of contact. Mayne's thoughts flew to Millie, and he wondered how she would bear this. But he could not see her anywhere. The widow, surrounded by her children, and evidently deriving moral support from a black-bordered pocket-handkerchief, sat in the sitkamer receiving condolences. But Millie was invisible.

Mayne was on delicate ground here. The dead man had expressly stipulated that he should be laid to rest with the words of his own liturgy, and the services of the English priest; but the Boer Predikant was in evidence, and Carol, who was quick to learn, and was beginning to understand local etiquette, stepped up to him, and asked him to say a prayer, when—the ghoulish corpse-inspection over at last—the coffin was screwed down, borne in, and triumphantly placed upon the family dining-table.

The Predikant, gratified, though hardly placated, took full advantage of his opportunities. He talked to the Almighty about himself, the Pieters family and the Boer nation, for three quarters of an hour; while Tante Wilma's noisy, snuffling sobs filled the place.

After this Mayne stepped forward, and read the first part of the burial service. Then the coffin was raised and borne solemnly out, and down the fields beyond the Kaffir huts, to where a stone wall enclosed the little family burying-ground.

Melicent Lutwyche, standing by the open grave, saw the procession coming, and the sight of Mayne's figure, bareheaded and white-robed, shook her fortitude for the first time. Her eyes began to burn with unshed tears. All these days, all these sleepless nights, her heart had never ceased to repeat: "I am glad! I am glad! He is safe now—free! Out of her clutches for ever!" But now a new and desolating thought supervened—suggested somehow by the liturgy's majestic words—the thought of his immense distance from herself. Heaven had formed no part of her conception of his release from captivity; now the anthem of Resurrection smote her with inarticulate pain. What had she, with a heart full of black hatred, to do with Resurrection? The white flowers in her hands shook; she was shivering from head to foot on the verge of a breakdown.

Then, foremost among the great throng of following people, she saw Amurrica's hatchet profile, and her thoughts, just painfully striving to take wing, sank back to the black, bad earth she knew. Warfare was still her portion. Amurrica and Bert Mestaer should never see her weep. She turned, moved a little, and stood exactly at the grave's head. The light was behind her, and to Bert she seemed like an austere angel, waiting to bestow the dead in some still sanctuary, where vulgar hands and tongues could reach him no longer. As the earth and stones fell pattering on the coffin, her white blooms fluttered down with them. The set intensity of her small white face fairly terrified her new guardian.

The service over, people cheered up, and hurried back to the farm to eat and drink before setting out upon their long return journeys. Mayne made Bert a signal to wait behind.

"Mestaer," he said, "I have to ride to Leitersdorp and get this will proved. I can't get back inside three days. I am setting off at once, and I expect to find a letter from England waiting for me at Mr. Crick's office, so that, when I come back, I shall know better what to do with Millie. Can I trust you while I am gone?"

He looked searchingly at the young man's face.

Bert grinned. "To punch Amurrica's head? Oh, yes!"

"Exactly! Or your own, if you should feel that you deserve it."

Bert shrugged. He was in a hurry. He hardly paused to realise what the three days' absence of the guardian might mean. His memory was centred upon the strained expression of Millie's little face, and he knew, by the faculty of divination which possessed him where she was concerned, that she was near the end of her powers of endurance. He had premonition that before long she must collapse. It seemed like a duel between him and her. When she gave in he would be glad, but he must be there. This was just now all that mattered—that he should be near her when the steel springs of her will relaxed.

He hurried away with an abstracted air the moment Mayne had finished speaking; and Mayne, with a sigh, wondered whether he had done right to tell him of his departure—whether he did right to go. Until the will was proved, he felt uncertain of being able to maintain his authority against Vrouw Lutwyche and her ignorant kinsfolk; he felt that a weight would be off his mind when he was safely back again. There was an Anglican sisterhood at Leitersdorp, and he wished to inquire whether the girl might be placed there for a time should circumstances render it necessary. But his guardianship was a real puzzle, and it was seriously complicated by the passion of Bert Mestaer.

CHAPTER VI
THE FLINGING OF THE GAGE

"What god, then, bade those two stand forth and strive?"
—C. S. CALVERLEY.

All the world of Slabbert's Poort was enclosed within the walls of "Lutwyche's." The funeral feast waxed noisier and noisier; there were the elements of discord trembling in the cup. Boer v. Briton was soon to be the order of the day, and the present company was largely composed of disappointed men—those who had come to clutch diamonds, and had found none. Their sense that the times were out of joint had been growing by degrees, in proportion as their prospects waned; and the war rumours were fanning it into flame. Visions of plunder danced before their eyes. They would have torn treasure from the bowels of the earth; if this was denied them, there was many a rich homestead for the sacking, much plunder scattered here and there over the wide land. This was what war meant to most of them. A few were English, but the great majority were Africanders. Amurrica was the only man of ability among them. He meant to throw in his lot with the winning side, "anyway"; but he had for days past been making highly inflammatory speeches, from the Boer point of view, in the saloon of the Vierkleur.

The festivities were well begun when Bert Mestaer walked in. He was not popular now. Most of those present were jealous of his possessions, and of his great physical strength. They thought him reserved, and nobody ever forgot that his mother was English. It was not considered certain which side he would take in the forthcoming struggle.

He was greeted with a clamour of welcome which held an underlying sneer. He took no notice; he was not quarrelling to-day. His courage and strength were facts too universally accepted for him to care to prove them. His grey eyes went like lightning about the room, till he discerned Millie, a large apron pinned over her black dress, staggering under the pile of plates which she was carrying to the wash-house. He pressed forward at once, as if nobody else had been present, took the girl's burden from her; and they went out of the room together, followed by laughter and jeers.