F.E. Mills Young (continued 5)

“I have never blamed you,” he interposed harshly.

He too got up, but he did not follow her. He stood leaning against one of the windows with his back to the outer air.

“I have blamed myself,” she answered gently,—“often.”

“You would,” he said. “You’re made like that. You’d bow your back to any burden you believed it to be your duty to bear. But you needn’t imagine it your especial mission to undertake any burden on my account. I wish from the bottom of my soul you could bring yourself to forget my existence.”

“I can’t do that,” she answered... “I don’t want to.”

She moved from her position and came to a standstill in front of him with her hands locked together in an attitude that was like a supplication in the nervous entwining of her fingers.

“I want you to lead a life more worthy of yourself,” she said... “worthier of the man I knew and loved. Oh, my dear! if you only knew how all these years you have been steadily breaking my heart... I can’t bear it... I can’t bear it, that you should lead the life you are leading... You are going back to that woman to-morrow... I know it. Give her up, Hugh,—and this life of adventure,—for my sake—because I ask it. Don’t go to-morrow. I hate the thought of your going... Stay here.”

“Impossible,” he answered with quiet decision. “I am pledged. I must go. I have no choice in the matter.”

Her hands fell apart. She made a quick, almost a despairing gesture.

“And do I count for nothing in your life?” she asked passionately. “You loved me once... in the years that are past—when you were younger. And I was young too—a girl. Ah! life, life! How full of promise it seems, and how each successive year fades and dims that promise! You were a king among men to me then... And now—you lead the life of a common adventurer, following reckless and dangerous enterprises, and enjoying your idle moments after the manner of a loose liver. Oh! my God! need this thing be? ... Why will you wantonly subjugate all that is fine in your nature? It was those finer qualities in you that I loved, and you are deliberately killing them.”

Lawless had drawn himself instinctively straighter under the shower of words. He looked at her with hard, unresponsive eyes.

“I have no use for that kind of love,” he said coldly. “It is of no human value. To love the imaginary saint in a man is not going to help the man when you make the inevitable discovery that the saint isn’t there. If love is to be of any use it must be for the sinner as well.”

He went nearer to her, and laughed harshly when he observed how she drew back involuntarily from his advance.

“When you can bring yourself,” he said, “to suffer my touch without flinching; when you can feel glad for my lips to rest upon yours without consideration for where last they may have rested; when you can love me for myself—as I am—as you know me, a common adventurer, a profligate, then we may wipe out the intervening years... not before.”

She was silent for a while after he had finished; and he knew that she was considering what he had uttered with such brutal frankness, weighing it in her mind.

Presently she said, moistening her dry lips before speaking:

“Will you promise not to go to-morrow? ... to break with the old life finally?”

“Bargain for bargain,” he returned cynically. “You can’t give freely, you see.”

His face hardened, became more resolute.

“I can’t do what you ask... It is out of the question. I am pledged irrevocably—promised. I can’t draw back.”

She moved away with a gesture of bitterness, and with her back towards him, stood, a reluctant tragic figure, with one hand on the back of the chair where she had stood when he entered.

“It is always the same,” she whispered... “Always the same. Your desires—the desire of the moment, first. I don’t believe you ever loved me, though at one time you professed so much.”

“At least, I did not love an ideal,” he answered. “I loved the flesh and blood that is you.”

She turned her head slowly and looked at him.

“That is it,” she answered bitterly... “The flesh and blood! ... The fairness of the flesh... All that the flesh means you care for.”

“Oh! I’m materialistic,” he admitted. “I’ve no fancy for falling in love with a dream.”

He followed her, and took up his position again close to her, with his hands behind him, looking steadily into her eyes.

“Until I met you,” he said, “I never realised how closely allied vice and virtue are. You are so very virtuous that to knock up against your purity flings a man back on himself and inclines him to the other extreme. I’ve always looked on intolerance as a vice. ... You are intolerant—most good people are. If only intolerance realised the amount of evil it is directly responsible for! But you’ll wonder at my impertinence in preaching to you... Indeed, I wonder at myself.”

“Go on,” she said hoarsely. “Perhaps—when you are gone—I shall remember.”

“Good Lord!” he cried. “I don’t want you to remember. Put me out of your thoughts altogether.”

“Ah! if we could command our thoughts,” she said.

His face suddenly lost its hard look, a kinder light came into the keen eyes. For a brief moment he rested a hand on the chair-back beside hers, then, recollecting, as suddenly removed it.

“When I go out of this room to-night,” he said, “I go out of your life finally. If you send for me again, I shall not obey the summons. God knows, I have injured you enough... The least that I can do is to help you to forget. This raking among the ashes is unprofitable. You can’t step down from your pedestal. I can’t stand with you on the heights. We look at life from different points of view, at different elevations. You see things from a height that obscures your perspective; I look upon life from a lower level, and behold its naked realities. What seems to me natural, you would regard as gross. It is one of the essential differences—only exaggerated—between man and woman. I can’t see the use in reviving through these unsatisfactory meetings all the stresses we lived through in the past... I’ll keep out of Cape Town as much as possible, and when my job here is ended I’ll leave the country.”

“There is no need for that,” she replied in so low a voice that he only just heard what she said. “I came out because I knew you were out here. I wanted to see you. Now that I have seen you I shall go Home.”

She looked at him quite calmly and held out her hand.

“Good-bye,” she said, that was all.

He felt grateful to her after he had left that she had spared him a more emotional scene. Could he have looked back into the room when he was speeding towards Cape Town he would have known that the emotion had merely been held in check.

Chapter Twenty Four.

Lawless reached Kraaifontein to find that there was neither word from nor sign of Tottie. No person answering Tottie’s description had been seen in the neighbourhood recently.

He engaged a room at the hotel and prepared to wait. Plainly, Tottie had not found Van Bleit come to heel as readily as she had supposed. He found the waiting extraordinarily dull. There was nothing for it but to tramp over the veld between meals. That, the eating of the meals, and sleeping, were the sole means of enjoyment provided by the neighbourhood, so far as he could judge. The sleeping, in Lawless’ opinion, was the most amusing of these recreations. During meals he was bored almost beyond endurance by the schoolmaster for the district, who had his lodging there; and the tramping, with no object beyond the exercise, proved a poor pastime.

“It is good to meet a man of education in a place like this,” the schoolmaster observed on the first day. “Are you making any length of stay, may I inquire?”

“God forbid!” Lawless ejaculated.

The other smiled a trifle deprecatingly.

“We have not much to offer—no,” he admitted thoughtfully. “But if you are here for a few days I can show you some good walks, and introduce you to one or two nice families—quite nice, where you will be well received.”

“Your quite nice families may not be so glad of my acquaintance as you imagine,” Lawless answered.

“With my recommendation that will be all right,” the other said.

“What the devil do you know about me,” Lawless demanded, “that you offer me a passport to the houses of your friends? My good sir, you should be more discreet in the matter of your introductions.”

The schoolmaster, who had taken a liking to the new-comer, looked hurt.

“I don’t know anything about you,” he replied. “But during a fairly long and varied life I have learnt to trust my judgment of men.”

Lawless suddenly smiled.

“And you judge a man as you find him,” he said, “without looking beneath the surface? You countenance him, even to introducing him to your friends... quam diu se bene gesserit.”

“What more is necessary?” inquired the schoolmaster promptly.

“True!” acquiesced Lawless. “If a man have seven devils what need their possession matter to anyone save himself so long as he keep them out of sight?”

On the second day after his arrival the letter of instructions reached him. It bore the Wellington postmark. Tottie was gradually working her way down the line. It was a scrawling, lengthy epistle, containing many interlineations and corrections and succinct marginal notes. Lawless carried it to the garden, and sat on a bench under a huge eucalyptus tree while he deciphered the contents. Properly adjusted, and omitting the evil spelling, it read:

Dear old Grit,—I know you’ll be chafing horribly at the delay; but there have been difficulties, and it was no use ringing up the curtain on this act before we had got things thoroughly in order, and every man knowing the part he has to play. Poor old Karl is under the delusion he is to play hero to my heroine. I have him properly in tow. He tumbled to his part beautifully at our first accidental encounter. He pursued, and I eluded. I got him as far as Ceres Road in this manner. Then one evening in the dusk I met and had a talk with him... Such a talk! ... He kissed me... He kept on kissing me—keep your hair on. Grit. I told him I was afraid of you,—that I’d bolted from you, and were scared to death you’d find me out. I said you were mad to get me back, but I wasn’t taking any. He offered to take me under his protection. I declined, but with less firmness than virtue should have displayed. He fancied I only needed pressing. I told him my idea was to get back to Cape Town and take the first boat up the coast, only I was scared of happening across you. And then he said some fine brave manly things that made one feel your life wasn’t worth an hour’s purchase. Bombastic fool! Always crowing and flapping his wings when he gets among the hens...

I let him talk. The next day I left Ceres Road and came on here. Of course he turned up almost immediately. We met again in the dusk and had another talk. Karl’s a hot one... The difficulty I have to keep him at arm’s length! ... I gave in to his pleading after a decent show of reluctance... He fancies I was only holding out for personal gain. We are going to a little place across the river about ten miles from Kraaifontein. It’s known as Jager’s Rest. By the time you get this we shall be on our road thither in a Cape cart. I’ve arranged with the nigger what route he drives, so if you follow my instructions all will be well; if you fail me now, devil knows what will happen.

I enclose a map I’ve drawn of the route. Just half-way between here and Kraaifontein—see my mark on the map—you’ll take your stand, and wait for us to pass somewhere about noon. There’s cover there, and one can play highwayman without risk. If I can get hold of Karl’s revolver I’ll spoil it for him, if I can’t I’ll hamper him in more feminine mode. In any case, I am not afraid you won’t be equal to him. If you murder him, I’ll stop and help you bury him. Tottie.

Lawless folded the letter, and carefully examined the map. Then he folded that also, put both in his pocket, and went in to breakfast. The schoolmaster, who had all but finished his meal, looked up to nod.

“You are indefatigable,” he said. “You have been exercising before breakfast?”

“Only loafing in the garden,” Lawless answered as he sat down.

“Yes.” The other glanced wistfully at the undisturbed end of the table, and then out through the window at the brilliant sunshine. “I’d been counting on your company this morning,” he said. “But of course now.” ... He looked keenly disappointed. “It’s going to be a hot day,” he remarked.

“Looks like it.”

Lawless unfolded his napkin and began on the eggs and bacon which the coloured boy placed before him. In his preoccupation he was scarcely conscious of the presence of the other man, save when he spoke, and then it was to feel a slight irritation at the inconsequent remarks that called for attention and response.

“Perhaps to-morrow,” the little insignificant shabby man proceeded tentatively, “you might feel inclined to accompany me. It’s a pleasant walk, and—”

Lawless looked up suddenly.

“To-morrow, I am returning to the coast,” he said.

“So soon!”

The speaker’s increased disappointment was too marked to pass unnoticed. Lawless looked at him in some surprise, and was rather ashamed of himself because he found the little man such a bore.

“It may seem soon to you,” he said. “You see, you lead a useful life; but when a man has nothing to occupy his time he quickly tires of a place like this. I never intended to stay more than a day or two.”

“I shall miss your company,” the other said, and rising from the table, lingered for a few moments with his hand upon it. “I suppose the place has not many attractions for visitors. For those who live here it is different. I drifted here. I scarcely know how. I began at Port Nolleth, but the west coast fever drove me inland. This little place suits me, and I suit it. We’re neither go-ahead.”

He smiled at his mild joke, but without mirth. His lonely life appeared lonelier contrasted with the break which the vigorous personality of this chance acquaintance had made in the monotony of his days. He had never met anyone whose going he so much regretted.

“Well, I won’t interrupt you at your breakfast any longer,” he said apologetically. “I must be starting. We shall meet this evening.”

“We’ll have our walk to-morrow, if it’s agreeable to you,” Lawless returned, and wondered at himself for being such a fool, yet was not ill-pleased with his folly when he caught the eager look that shone in the mild eyes behind the spectacles.

“Awful bore, old Burton,” he mused, looking through the window after the shabby figure as it disappeared in the sunshine. “But I’m damned if he isn’t rather a fine simple soul, after that!”

When he had finished his breakfast he went out to see about a horse to ride. There was a mare in the stable which, according to the proprietor, could go like the wind. Appearance is not everything to judge by in the matter of a horse’s paces. The animal in question looked languid, Lawless considered; but that alone could not disprove her reputation as a racer. He ordered the mare to be saddled, and went indoors to examine his revolver and make certain preparations for the encounter with Van Bleit. He had very vividly in his mind the last encounter in which he had been so cunningly outwitted. He meant to settle that score, which, like a debt of honour, weighed upon his mind.

When he was ready he went to the stables, and, having made full inquiries as to the direction of Jager’s Rest, rode off, a feeling of exhilaration swaying him as he felt the wind in his teeth, and listened to the rhythm of his horse’s hoofs thudding over the veld. After his compulsory inactivity the present adventure was particularly welcome. From choice he would have preferred to face Van Bleit with the odds equal; but in the circumstances, with all there was at stake, it had ceased to be a personal matter, it was a matter calling for the utmost discretion.

When he arrived at the place marked for him by Tottie on the map, which, following her directions, he found without difficulty, he dismounted, and, being ahead of time, hobbled his horse and allowed it to graze while he enjoyed a pipe, lying full length on the veld with his eye fixed attentively along the line of route the Cape cart would travel, according to the information in his letter. In many respects the lie of the land reminded him of the spot where Van Bleit had so cleverly tricked him. The open, undulating stretch of veld, save that it was more thickly overgrown with scrub, was much the same, it presented the same wide desolate appearance; and in place of the dense bush was a belt of wattles,—the cover Tottie had mentioned, where a horseman could conceal himself without fear of detection. Lawless approved the choice of ground. Tottie had evidently been over the route and arranged it all beforehand. So far everything had been contrived with the greatest forethought and discretion.

He rose after a while, and pocketing his pipe, whistled to the mare, which, feeding on the veld some yards distant, lifted her head at the sound, and moved farther away. Lawless followed her, and untying the rein with which he had hobbled her, patted her lean sides encouragingly. She had carried him well, thus disproving her appearance, and verifying to some extent her reputation.

He led her into the shade of the trees, and standing with his shoulders resting against one of the trunks waited with the rein over his arm, peering between the interlacing branches for a sign of the cart. It was late. Tottie had mentioned noon. He looked at his watch. It was after the half-hour.

And then, far off, he saw it coming.

He remained quite still, not a muscle of his tense face relaxed, only into the grey eyes there leapt a sudden flash of stern, fierce joy.

The cart came on at a fair pace. It was drawn by two horses with a coloured man driving. In the back seat, under the hood, were the figures of a man and woman.

While it was still some distance off Lawless mounted, and keeping well under cover of the trees, rode his horse as near to the opening as he considered safe, and sat motionless in the saddle, waiting. A shaft of sunlight that pierced its way between the branches glinted brightly on the barrel of a revolver which was gripped in his right hand.

The cart drew nearer. The sound of the wheels was audible,—nearer still. Lawless could hear distinctly Tottie’s deep, rather vulgar laugh. She was talking incessantly in a high-pitched, unnatural voice that suggested a nervous desire to distract her companion’s attention. When they drew parallel with the belt of trees, Lawless observed her call Van Bleit to look at something on the other side of the cart, something which was plainly not there, and which therefore Van Bleit, following her pointing finger with every desire in the world to oblige her, failed utterly to see. What he did see the next minute, bringing his head round with a jerk at the unexpected sound of a horse’s hoofs, was the barrel of Lawless’ revolver unpleasantly close to his head.

“Hands up?” cried Lawless. “Or, by Jove! you’re a dead man.”

Tottie shrieked, and flung her arms around Van Bleit with a grip the strength of which considerably surprised him. He was quite convinced in his own mind that if she had not hampered him he could have defended himself. He swore at her. Then, his eye on the revolver, he nodded sulkily.

“All right?” he said. “You score this round.”

Lawless spoke to the driver, who, staring at the shining weapon in the stranger’s hand with distended eyes and fallen jaw, reluctantly pulled in his horses and brought the cart to a standstill.

“You’ll oblige me,” he then said to his discomfited foe in a voice like the click of steel, “by getting out of the cart. I have business with you.”

Van Bleit obeyed with an alacrity he did not often display. He recognised the seriousness of his case, but, unaware of Tottie’s treachery, hoped rather forlornly that with her aid he might yet contrive some device whereby to get even with his assailant. It was a bold game for a man to play, to hold up three persons, and one of them armed.

Tottie alighted after him. After the first shriek she had subsided into an extraordinary calm, and all that could be seen of her face through the thick blue veil gave no indication of alarm. She was indeed broadly smiling. She sidled up to Van Bleit and slipped a hand into his pocket. For the moment he imagined she was playing his game for him, the next he was quick to suspect she was not, and his hand came down spontaneously and grasped her wrist. At the same time he felt something cold against his temple, and instantly perceived she held a revolver in her other hand.

“I don’t want to shoot you,” Lawless said curtly; “but if you don’t put your hands up I shall be forced to.”

Van Bleit’s hands went up again, and he coughed and spat in disgust. He realised fully now that he had been tricked. It was apparent to the meanest intelligence that Lawless and the woman were acting in concert.

The woman took his weapon from him and flung it out of reach. Then an extraordinary thing happened. It was the most humiliating and the most astounding moment in his life. The woman put up a hand to her hat and dragged at it so that it seemed to him she was pulling, not only her hat, but her head with it. And then the hat with its crown of roses and its big blue veil, and the wonderful golden hair, which Van Bleit had believed to be dyed but had never suspected of being a wig, hit him in the face, and so fell at his feet; and he stood with his upraised arms, his face purple with rage, staring into a painted, grinning, vaguely familiar countenance which, with its short fair hair, and prominent ears that the golden curls had hidden, he guessed at rather than recognised for Tom Hayhurst’s.

“There’s a lock of my hair for remembrance, dear boy,” said Tottie.

Chapter Twenty Five.

The amazement of Van Bleit was equalled by that of the Kaffir driver. He nearly tumbled out of his seat in his astonishment; but the child that is in the African was more tickled than anything else at this rapid change of sex. He chuckled audibly, and uttered a succession of rapid clicks in expression of his appreciation. With the cunning of his race he quickly perceived which was the winning side, and decided forthwith that if a choice had to be made he would submit himself to the orders of the new baas, and the baas-missis. The native does not willingly risk his skin or his ultimate chance of reward. Having arrived at this decision he settled himself comfortably in his seat, and with the reins held loosely in his hands, prepared to watch developments. If there was to be murder done, which he firmly believed, he was going to see it.

The same belief was in the mind of Van Bleit. He looked into the hard cold face of the man on horseback, and recalled with very real regret how he had slashed that same thin, scarred face with his whip when he had the man at his mercy. With still greater regret he remembered how he had refrained from shooting him on that occasion. If he had only killed him then he would not be in this mess.

He blinked stupidly, and dropped his eyes, and fell to thinking. There was no way out. He was fairly trapped, and that by two men who owed him each a very considerable grudge. He thought of Tom Hayhurst’s broken head. It was easily seen where the blow had fallen by the deeper shade of the new hair that had grown over the place. Then later thoughts of Tom Hayhurst in connection with his disguise obtruded themselves, and again the angry purple showed in his greying face.

“Did you bring a length of rope, Grit?” he heard a voice inquire, and started involuntarily at the unfamiliar sound. It was the voice of Hayhurst, no longer high-pitched in the affected drawl that was assumed and discarded with the wonderful golden wig, but the sharp clear tones of the young engineer as he had heard them in Cape Town.

There was no verbal answer, but the man addressed took a short coil of rope from his coat pocket and threw it to the speaker. Hayhurst caught it and approached Van Bleit.

“Now, darling,” he said, in the accents that were Tottie’s, “put your hands behind you.”

Van Bleit complied because he dared not refuse.

“I’d like,” he said, and his hands wavered till the click of Lawless’ revolver set at half-cock reluctantly compelled him to bring them into the required position, “to throttle you.”

Hayhurst laughed.

“I don’t doubt it,” he answered.

Not being particularly soft-hearted, and having in mind, besides his own injuries, those raw wrists of Lawless’ which he had unbound in the early morning by the obscure light in the Kaffir hut, he drew the rope tightly about Van Bleit’s thick wrists and fastened it securely with a vindictive satisfaction in the knowledge of the discomfort he caused.

“You ought to feel flattered,” he said, “that we admired your methods sufficiently to copy them.”

He stepped from behind and stood in front of him, jeering.

“Wouldn’t you like to kiss me? ... It may be your last opportunity.”

Van Bleit’s ashen face turned brick red, and from red changed again slowly to the dirty grey colour that told of the terror that possessed him. He did not answer, but he spat at his tormentor in his rage.

Lawless dismounted and hitched the rein of his horse to a limb of a tree. He pocketed his weapon, and approached Van Bleit, who, expecting a personal attack, fell back hurriedly before his advance.

“Stand still,” he commanded. And Van Bleit obeyed.

“What are you up to?” he asked nervously... “You’re remembering things against me. You’ve got a grudge—both of you. Well, just you remember that I might have murdered you that morning—without risk... and I didn’t.”

“I’m remembering,” Lawless answered, “everything.”

He turned to Hayhurst.

“Change your rig, Tom,” he said quietly. “And clean your face, if you can. I may need you presently.”

And to the huge delight of the Kaffir, and the further mortification of Van Bleit, Hayhurst proceeded in a business-like manner, with an occasional lapse into fooling, to divest himself of pointed shoes, skirt and blouse, corsets and artificial bust, until with an exaggerated sigh of relief he stood in his pants and shirt and stretched himself luxuriously.

“No, I wouldn’t be a woman,” he remarked,—“not even a successful woman... And I’ve enjoyed a fair amount of popularity in the rôle.”

While he went to the cart for the portmanteau of male attire he had brought with him, Lawless occupied himself in going through the contents of Van Bleit’s pockets, who, while asserting with a contemptuous laugh that there was nothing there of the least value to anyone beside himself, seemed none the less uneasy at being searched.

“I suppose you don’t believe me,” he said sneeringly, “when I say that I don’t carry that packet you want about with me?”

“Oh! I believe you,” Lawless answered, calmly continuing the search. “I’ve a great faith in your veracity.”

He came upon Van Bleit’s pocket-book, and withdrew a few paces to examine the contents at his leisure. He had a strong idea that if Van Bleit carried what he was looking for, he would find it somewhere between the closely packed covers. Van Bleit watched him with hardly controlled anxiety.

“I don’t see what concern you have with my private papers,” he remarked bitterly.

“Your vision will be clearer if I happen across what I want,” Lawless replied. “If I don’t it will be so much the worse for you.”

He went through the contents carefully while Van Bleit looked on in almost painful interest, and Tom Hayhurst, having changed into a light-coloured suit, proceeded to remove by the aid of much grease the bloom of a complexion that had helped to Van Bleit’s undoing. The grinning native held a looking-glass for him, which Hayhurst carried with his make-up box. He had studied the art of making-up from a professional for the innocent purpose of amateur theatricals at which he was remarkably clever. He had acquired his knowledge of the manners and appearance of the demi-mondaine also at first hand, and had conceived the idea of turning his knowledge to practical account as a means of retrieving his former failure and avenging his broken head.

As he stood in the brilliant sunshine in his shirt sleeves and removed the extraordinary quantity of grease paint with a soft rag, he felt satisfied that he had played a difficult part, and played it exceedingly well. Anyone but a genius might have overplayed the part and given the thing away. The finish of the game was in Grit’s hands.

He had an immense admiration for Lawless. It had been aroused in the first instance by the tales Simmonds had told Colonel Grey of the man with the scar and the queer nickname and the reputation for courage. Other accounts he had heard later had fostered it, and his subsequent personal knowledge of the man had led to a hero-worship which, being shy of showing affection for his own sex, he contrived fairly successfully to hide. But it was sufficiently real to allow him to contemplate without envy Lawless’ final success in the matter of the letters. He was satisfied that the credit of the affair should be his. Moreover, he was curiously anxious that Colonel Grey should be forced to acknowledge the integrity of the man whose trustworthiness he seemed to doubt.

He was in the act of removing the last traces of make-up from his eyebrows when a sudden exclamation from Lawless caused him to look up from his occupation.

“Got the letters?” he asked.

Lawless stood with a slip of paper in his hand. The pocket-book and its further contents lay on the veld at his feet.

“Yes,” he answered briefly.

Hayhurst whistled. Then he stared at the slip of paper in the other’s possession.

“Clue to ’em, I suppose?” he said, a trifle disappointedly.

“Hurry up, Tom, and finish. I want you,” Lawless returned, without vouchsafing any explanation.

Van Bleit looked at the slip of paper, and scowled darkly.

“That’s no use to you,” he said, with an attempt at bluff. “If you hand in that receipt they won’t give you the packet.”

“I know all about that,” Lawless answered, and smiled quietly. “Ever since you put it into my mind to guess where those letters were I’ve been waiting to get hold of this. Are you ready, Tom?”

He ran his eye over the metamorphosed figure, as Hayhurst, having removed the last of the paint, came forward in response to his inquiry, and the smile on his face deepened.

“By Jove!” he said.

Hayhurst laughed.

“Old Karl don’t seem to like me nearly so well,” he complained, grinning at Van Bleit’s scowling visage. “Don’t seem to want to tickle my ribs now? ... Well, baas, what’s my job?”

“Get round to the left side and keep him covered while I free his hands. He’s going to do a little writing, and if he attempts any tricks you have my orders to fire.”

“You don’t try that game. I’ll see you to hell first,” Van Bleit shouted.

“You’ll find yourself in hell very shortly, if you give trouble,” Lawless answered grimly, as he proceeded to undo the ropes that bound his captive’s arms.

Van Bleit looked green.

“You daren’t do it,” he stammered... “There’s the nigger for a witness.”

“I’ll risk that. Besides, there’s such a thing as sending the nigger out of it... and the boy too.”

“Not much. Grit,” Hayhurst interposed, with his glance on Van Bleit and his finger on the trigger. “If there’s going to be any fun I’m in at the finish.”

Van Bleit gritted his teeth, and finding his hands free, looked eagerly round for a means of escape. There was none. Unarmed, he was helpless against these two. The horse, hitched to the tree, was too far away to reach, the cart was not much nearer. Before he could reach either Hayhurst would shoot him down. And if he missed, Lawless was armed and could not fail to hit him. He was like a rat in a trap in sight of the water in which he was to drown. A cold sweat broke out on his brow. Life was very sweet... And the letters! ... The loss of the letters would be almost as great a disaster as the loss of life.

“It’s not a bit of use,” he muttered, as Lawless produced a fountain pen and held it out to him; “the Bank won’t hand the packet over to anyone but myself, even if he tender the receipt.”

“Don’t you exercise your mind as to what the Bank will or will not do,” Lawless remarked. “What you have to think about is to obey orders. You’d better concentrate all your attention on that.”

Van Bleit took the pen.

“You can’t make me sign,” he said.

“I can’t make you—no. But it amounts to this, if you refuse I send that nigger out of earshot and shoot you where you stand... And mind this, if you attempt any tricks the threat holds good. I know your signature. If you don’t write it fair and square on this you’re a dead man. You know me, Karl Van Bleit. I don’t suppose you’ve any reason to imagine I shall go back on my word.”

He held the Bank’s receipt for the safe deposit of the sealed packet of letters on the back of a notebook which he took from his pocket, keeping his hands upon it, and holding it firmly against his chest for Van Bleit’s greater convenience in writing. Van Bleit hesitated. Only the knowledge that Tom Hayhurst’s revolver would go off as an inevitable consequence prevented him having a struggle for the paper.

“My patience is not inexhaustible. I give you one minute,” Lawless said.

The Dutchman started, raised his pen hand nervously, and again drew back. This was slow torture.

“I’ll sell to you... Give me a sum down,” he muttered, thinking vainly of the handsome sum he had several times refused. “They won’t part with the packet in exchange for this... But I’ll sell it to you—for a sum down.”

Hayhurst chuckled.

“Don’t know when you’re beaten, do you, old man?”

“Write,” was all Lawless vouchsafed... “Here, the discharge across the back.”

Van Bleit obeyed. He flung down the pen when he had finished with an oath.

“I hope you are satisfied now,” he remarked with great bitterness, as Lawless carefully placed the receipt in an envelope and slipped it inside his coat.

“Not quite,” he answered. He stooped for the pen and handed it again to Van Bleit. “We are not through yet. You have played your game of bluff very well, but you know perfectly that I could not get that packet from the Bank even with your receipt without a letter of authority from you.”

Van Bleit completely lost his temper. This man knew too much. It was almost like parting with his life’s blood, this plundering him of his treasure.

“Damn you?” he spluttered. “Damn you! May my hand rot off before it writes any such letter for you!”

Lawless took an envelope and paper from his pocket, and calmly placed and held in position the envelope on the improvised writing-pad.

“Now,” he said, presenting it as he had the official receipt, “you will please address this to the Manager.”

“That I never will,” Van Bleit blustered. “S’elp me, I never will.”

“Tom,” said Lawless in a voice of deadly quiet, “when I give the word, don’t hesitate to fire.”

“Right-ho?” Hayhurst answered cheerfully. “My only fear is that this weapon of mine is so eager it may go off on its own account.”

Lawless looked Van Bleit steadily in the eyes.

“I want you to understand,” he said, “that I am in earnest when I say that it is your life against these letters. Personally, I would quite as soon it were your life. The letters are nothing to me; but they are of considerable importance to other people... I doubt, on the whole, whether I should not be doing them and society at large a greater service by putting an end to you. I don’t intend wasting my time in persuasion. Either you write as I direct, or I put a bullet through your heart.”

In his chagrin and utter helplessness Van Bleit began to whimper.

“What have I ever done to you,” he asked, “that you should hunt me down as you have? It’s all spite—and jealousy. I’d like to kill you... I will kill you for this. My turn will come.”

He took out his handkerchief and wiped the tears from his eyes impatiently.

“If you’d only be reasonable,” he said, “and come to terms...”

“I’ve stated my terms,” Lawless interrupted drily. “Count ten, Tom; then if he doesn’t write, blaze away.”

Hayhurst began to count audibly and fairly rapidly. When he reached eight Van Bleit with the tears in his eyes put his pen to the envelope and hurriedly directed it. Lawless examined it, put it away as he had the receipt, and spread, and held, the sheet of notepaper. There was a hard look of satisfaction in his eyes as he fastened them on Van Bleit’s livid convulsed face. The knowledge of the exquisite torture he was inflicting gave him the peculiar pleasure that a man experiences when he is wiping out an injury.

“Write briefly,” he said, “to the Manager to the effect that you will be obliged if he will hand over to the bearer of this letter, Tom Hayhurst, the packet you deposited for safe keeping in the Bank, for which you enclose your receipt.”

With a hand that shook Van Bleit obeyed. But half-way through he hesitated, and, with his shaking hand upraised, looked savagely at Lawless.

“Count ten, Tom.”

The steely tones rang out commandingly, and had scarcely ceased when Hayhurst in audible response started his rapid counting. Van Bleit finished the letter in desperate haste, and signed it. Then with a bitter imprecation he snapped the pen between his hands and flung the broken pieces violently in Lawless’ face.

“Have you done with me now?” he demanded.

“Not quite.”

The reply was unexpected. Van Bleit paused irresolute, and stared with fallen countenance at this man who, not content with robbing him, demanded more. He began to fear that having tricked him out of the letters he would now foully murder him. The knowledge that, if so, he would in all probability hang for the crime was neither reassuring nor consoling.

Lawless read the letter, folded it, and placed it in his breast pocket. Then he looked up and met Van Bleit’s eye.

“What are you after?” Van Bleit asked dully. “You’ve got what you wanted... You let me go.”

The man he addressed smiled quietly, and taking his revolver from his pocket, covered the speaker with it.

“You don’t take me for quite such a fool, I hope?” he said. “All right, Tom! You’re off guard now. Just tie his hands again. I shan’t want him to use them further in my service.”

Van Bleit swung round as Hayhurst approached him, prepared to offer resistance.

“No, no?” he cried quickly. “I know what you’re after... None of that—no?”

“It’s not worth your while to resist,” Lawless returned curtly. “It’s hands behind or a bullet in your leg. I’m not particular which.”

Van Bleit faced round again and stared at him helplessly.

“You b-bully!” he stammered.

But he submitted quietly while Tom Hayhurst secured his wrists as before. And then he gazed about him with his trapped-rat expression, his full cheeks flabby and grey, and his thick lip fallen, showing the big white teeth. He was terribly afraid that his ease-taking, pleasure-loving body was about to suffer hurt. If they did not purpose murdering him, Grit Lawless would wreak his vengeance in some violent manner for the lashing he had received at his hands.

Lawless put the receipt with the letter inside the envelope which, taking Van Bleit’s seed ring off his finger, and some wax and matches from his own pocket, he proceeded to seal.

“You see, I came prepared,” he said.

Van Bleit scowled, but answered nothing. He was now principally concerned for his personal safety. If he could escape in time to wire to Denzil before the Bank opened in the morning, there was still a chance of saving the letters, even if Denzil had to pay for it with a couple of months for assault. Telegraphing to the Bank to stop the delivery of the packet was, he felt, useless.

Lawless gave the letter into Hayhurst’s charge.

“Take the horse, Tom,” he said. “I’ve a fancy for keeping the nigger in sight. We’re not running any risks this trip. Tell ’em at the hotel that I’m spending the night with a friend, and will be back for breakfast in the morning. You’re in plenty of time for the train. Get to the Bank as soon as it opens, and when you receive the packet take it to Colonel Grey, and deliver it into his hands.”

“And you?” Hayhurst asked, eager to undertake the mission; yet firmly convinced that the final delivery of the letters to the Colonel was a privilege that by rights should be Lawless’.

“I’m entertaining Van Bleit,” Lawless replied.

Tom Hayhurst glanced in the direction of their prisoner, and from him towards the cart where the whip stood invitingly in the socket, suggesting thoughts of retribution pleasing to dwell upon.

“I’d like to see you mark his face before I go,” he said. He pointed to the whip. “Shall I fetch it?” he asked.

“You fetch your mount and clear out,” Lawless answered. “When I horsewhip a man I don’t do it with his hands tied.”

Hayhurst gave the speaker a quick look. Then he walked towards the tree where the horse was fastened, unhitched it, and sprang into the saddle.

“So long, Grit,” he sang out.

He blew a kiss to Van Bleit as he cantered past.

“You’ll fancy yourself an Indian Brave when you wear my wig on your watch-chain,” he cried.

Van Bleit scowled yet more fiercely, and consoled himself with planning future vengeance against this impudent impostor to whom he owed his downfall. If ever fortune played into his hands he would have Tom Hayhurst’s life.

Chapter Twenty Six.

Lawless had during a chequered career spent many an eventful night round a camp fire, but no more strange experience had he passed through than on that night, guarding Van Bleit on the open veld.

The night was cold, with a fresh wind blowing. The Kaffir, who remained greatly against his will, but dared not openly refuse to stay for fear of the baas of the scarred face and compelling eye, gathered wood and made a fire, before which Lawless sat with his revolver at his hand, and Van Bleit stretched himself on the cushions that had been taken from the cart and flung down on the veld. He feigned slumber, but did not actually close his eyes throughout the night. He watched his captor incessantly, hoping that sleep would overtake him; but Lawless sat wakeful and alert, with his eyes upon the flames, only moving at long intervals when he rose to throw fresh wood upon the fire.

There was nothing to eat, and only a small quantity of spirit in Van Bleit’s flask. The Kaffir had a pocketful of mealies which he chewed before the fire. Close by their uitspan was a watercourse from whence he fetched water in small quantities in the empty flask.

Van Bleit complained of hunger. He also complained of cold, and of the tightness of the rope that bound his wrists. In common humanity, Lawless loosened the knots. He had no fancy to torture the man. But if Van Bleit had hoped by this means to slip his bonds he was doomed to disappointment. They were more comfortable, but none the less secure.

He lay still afterwards for a long while feigning sleep; and Lawless, watching intently, observed by the uncertain flickering light, that now leapt upward in a tongue of brilliant flame, and again died down to a dull red glow that left all beyond the immediate circle round the fire in absolute darkness, that with every interval of obscurity Van Bleit drew himself stealthily nearer the fire. When he lay quite close to the hot embers with his bound hands among them, Lawless rose, flung on fresh wood to make a blaze, and leisurely approaching the recumbent figure, stirred it with his boot.

“Get back,” he said. “I don’t mind you blistering your hands, that’s your look out; but I object to you trying to burn that rope.”

Van Bleit rolled back on his cushions without replying, and lay still again; and Lawless sat as before, smoking his pipe to solace his empty stomach, with his revolver beside him, and his eyes on the leaping flames. Only the Kaffir slept, and his rest was tranquil and unbroken, in strange contrast with the silent conflict that was going on close by him on the opposite side of the fire.

The stars sloped to the westward, and the night grew darker, with the heavy blackness that precedes the dawn. The wind died away. Cold and still and strangely pure was the feel of the air. Lawless kicked the fire into a blaze and looked down at Van Bleit.

“Want a smoke?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Van Bleit’s tone was sulky. Lawless took his pipe from his pocket and filled it for him. He put the stem in his mouth and held a match to the bowl. Van Bleit was not gracious. He wanted to smoke badly or he would have refused the offer.

“Makes a man feel a precious fool,” he said.

“Makes him look one,” Lawless answered.

He returned to his place and sat silent and still, watching for the dawn. It came with a faint breath of wind in the trees, just a whispering stir among the leaves. Then silence again, and the light broke like a white line drawn horizontally upon the blackboard of the sky. Lawless watched it broaden, grow brighter, till it dispersed the surrounding blackness, and objects and landmarks familiar in the daylight began to take definite shape and form. He stretched himself wearily and looked about him. His glance fell on Van Bleit, pallid, red-eyed, obviously suffering, observing him with the baleful look of some savage captive beast.

He got up and took a few short rapid turns to circulate his blood. It was cold in the dawn, and the fire was dying. There was no more wood to throw on. He had spent nights like this in the Boer lines during the war, but he had never been told off single-handed to guard a prisoner.

He kept a watchful eye on the east for the first flushing of the clouds. Never had he welcomed the sun more gratefully than when it lifted itself indolently from the rose clouds that veiled its rising and soared above them into the blue of the morning sky. Van Bleit stirred, stretched himself to the warmth as an animal does, and sat up.

“Blast you!” he snarled. “When are you going to make a move out of this? I want some breakfast. I’m famished... And I’ve got a chill. My clothes are wet through with the dew.”

Lawless looked at his watch.

“There’s lots of time yet,” he answered cheerfully. “You won’t hurt for a little fasting. When a man habitually overfeeds it’s good for his stomach to give it a rest.”

“How long are you for keeping me here?” Van Bleit asked, his voice quivering with repressed rage.

“I’m giving Tom his chance to get to the Bank,” Lawless answered. “After that, I’ve no further interest in your movements.”

Van Bleit eyed him calculatingly. His courage had returned to a certain degree since he had suffered no personal violence. He felt reassured on that point. But his respect for his captor was no greater on that account. Had their relative positions been reversed he would have acted very differently.

“My arms are numb,” he grumbled. “Can’t you put me on parole and undo this cord? It’s the very devil I’m suffering in my wrists.”

But Lawless was wholly unmoved.

“When we part company,” he said, “I’ll free them—which is more than you did for me. As for your parole! ... I wouldn’t place greater trust in your word than I would in that of a Kaffir.”

Van Bleit controlled himself with an effort.

“You’re armed, and I’m not,” he sneered.

“Yes, I’m armed. But I’m not going to put myself to the trouble of sitting with my finger on the trigger.”

Van Bleit got up and walked about. He was stiff and hungry, and his head ached. He believed he had a touch of fever. He was subject to intermittent attacks, and lying out all night with no protection from the heavy dews was sufficient to bring on an attack. He cursed volubly as he tramped about, and swore swift and dire vengeance on his enemy, who, exercising also with his hands in his coat pockets, was keeping a steady watch on his movements.

The Kaffir awoke after a while, and, rolling over, stared about him as if wondering how he came to be amid his present surroundings. Then his eye encountered the terrible eye of the strange baas with the scar upon his face, and he scrambled to his feet and grinned nervously.

“In an hour’s time I shall want the horses inspanned, John.”

“Ja, baas.”

The Kaffir made off. There was in the woolly head instructed at the Mission-station a suspicion that the tall, stern-faced baas with the eye that pierced through one, and the ugly scar along his jaw, was, if not the Devil himself, a very near relation. Had he suddenly disappeared in smoke with his captive, though it would have terrified the black man, it would not greatly have astonished him.

As he moved rapidly away to where the horses were hitched to the pole of the cart he came upon one of his former gods, a strange-looking insect that, after the manner of the chameleon, took on the shade of the grass upon which it fed. It closely resembled in form a forked blade of coarse grass. With a surreptitious look about him to make certain he was not observed, the Kaffir bowed before his one-time god and uttered a weird invocation in his native tongue for protection against the white man’s Devil. Then in order to square the white man’s God he looked up at the blue sky in the hope that the great mysterious Being, who was somewhere behind the clouds, was not conversant with the Kaffir language, and so had failed to understand his lapse into idolatry, and cried aloud, parrot-fashion, a prayer he had been taught in English when he became a convert at the Mission, because his brother Klaus had joined the Mission, and had a blanket given him, and plenty good things when he was zwak. But the chance encounter with the little grass-god, which, being tangible, was easier of comprehension, did more to reassure him than the prayer sent into the blue distance which, having such a long way to travel, might never reach.

The Kaffir’s idea of time was vague. He went by the sun. One hour the sun him so much higher. He rubbed down the horses as best he could, having nothing to groom them with save handfuls of grass, and led them away to the watercourse to drink. He did not hasten to return, but kept an observant eye on the sun, fearful of incurring the baas’ anger by overstaying the limit. When he judged the hour up he returned to the uitspan and proceeded to harness the horses. The baas still stood with his hands in his pockets; but he no longer watched the other baas, who was reclining again on the cushions of the cart, a huddled inert mass of misery. The game was up, and he had lost finally. He felt like a man who has toiled honestly and laboriously and been scandalously defrauded of the rewards of his industry.

The Kaffir finished harnessing the horses, and then came up for the cushions. Lawless spoke to Van Bleit, and he got up sullenly, kicking the native savagely as he stooped and reached out a dusky hand. The Kaffir shot a venomous glance at him, but uttered no verbal protest. He gathered up the cushions and carried them away and arranged them in the cart. Then he mounted to his seat and sat with the reins in his hands, waiting.

Lawless again addressed himself to Van Bleit.

“Turn round,” he said curtly, “and I’ll unfasten your wrists.”

Van Bleit’s arms were so cramped when eventually they were released that for some time he could only work them gently, moving his wrists and fingers and relaxing his stiffened muscles. The inconvenience and the pain in them did not improve his temper. And when it became clear to him there was no room in the cart for him, that he must walk many miles before he could get a conveyance or break his fast, his rage was beyond control.

“You devil!” he shouted. “You dirty low cad of a Kaffir! Look out for your skin, that’s all. I keep my word regardless of consequences, and I say that for this you shall pay—and pay dearly, you hired spy who does another man’s dirty work.”

“Drive on,” said Lawless indifferently; and the Kaffir promptly whipped up his horses and drove off at a furious rate.

The little schoolmaster was seated at breakfast when the Cape cart clattered noisily up the sunny street, and Lawless, descending from it, entered the hotel. He went to his room, stripped, bathed, and changed his clothes; then he repaired in all haste to the dining-room, and nodding to Mr Burton, sat down at the end of the table.

“I’m famished,” he said. “But if you’ll give me a little time in which to take the brunt off an appetite that seems as though it would never be satisfied, I’ll be ready to accompany you as we arranged.”

The mild eyes behind the glasses blinked their surprise and their pleasure in equal degrees.

“Oh! plenty of time! plenty of time?” he asserted, and quietly pushed the butter and rolls and fruit nearer the new-comer’s hand. “It’s early... I am glad to see you. I was afraid you might not be returning.”

Lawless fell to on his breakfast when it made its appearance with a zest that astonished his companion.

“What a good thing it is to have a healthy appetite,” he observed. “Early rising and a drive before breakfast suit you, my friend.”

Lawless laughed grimly.

“For the first time I experience a sneaking sympathy with the cannibal... I could almost eat you.”

Even a much neglected appetite reaches its limit in time. The quantity of food that Lawless managed to dispose of was a revelation to the schoolmaster; he had never in all his life been equal to making such a meal.

“You have a good digestion,” he remarked. “It is a fine thing.”

“No doubt,” Lawless answered. “But it becomes assertive when a man neglects to give it work. And now, Mr Burton, I won’t keep you waiting any longer. Your patience has stood a test this morning that mine would not bear so well.”

“Indeed, I have been well entertained,” the other assured him.

“In watching the exhibition of a man’s eating prowess! You are more easily amused than I am.”

“I imagine that to be so. I belong to a generation that enjoyed simpler pleasures than you men of the present day. But I fancy we who took pleasure in simple things got more joy out of life... I may be wrong.”

“Joy! There’s precious little joy in life that I can see,” Lawless replied, and rose, scraping his chair noisily upon the carpetless floor. The little man looked at him earnestly.

“I am not a philosopher,” he said, “nor have I over much learning—just enough for the exercise of my profession, and no more. But I can tell you the reason you find no joy in life; it is because you don’t know where to look for it. Joy lies in ourselves.”

Lawless laughed shortly.

“I’m not a likely sort of subject to harbour joy,” he returned.

“Why not?” the other said quite simply... “You shut the door in her face, my friend, or she would find her way in fast enough. Give her a chance.”

He took up his hat, and lighted his old meerschaum pipe before going out.

“On a day like this,” he said, “it makes a man joyful merely to feel he is alive.”

It was a great pleasure to the schoolmaster to walk along beside his tall companion and point out to him the many beauties of the place, beauties which alone Lawless would assuredly have overlooked. A lizard, peeping with bright eyes between the stones of a piece of broken wall, caught the little man’s attention. As they approached it darted into a crack and disappeared. The schoolmaster pointed to it like an eager boy who discovers something rare. Despite his boredom at such trifles, Lawless was faintly amused. A wild flower, a humming-bird, a large green butterfly, each in turn excited interest, and called forth admiration and comment.

The man was a botanist, and spoke learnedly of the flora of the neighbourhood. The wild flowers of the Cape have yet to be properly classified; many of them are unnamed; they are simply “bloemetjes.” The schoolmaster had named many of them to please himself. He picked a beautiful pure white bloom from the veld, and gave it to Lawless to admire.

“It is so flawless, so pure,” he said. “I call that my Flower of Innocence. The veld is full of them. But they are scentless. One day someone will take it, perhaps, and cultivate it and give it a scent. But I like it best as nature has made it. To me it is perfect.”

Lawless placed it in his buttonhole, not that he cared for wearing flowers, but because—why he did not know—it pleased him to give pleasure to this simple-minded man.

The schoolmaster introduced his friend to his pupils, a proceeding that was fraught with embarrassment to both sides. Never in his life before had Lawless felt so great a fool. He was glad to make his escape.

Mr Burton parted from him reluctantly. He went a little way with him on his backward journey, and stood for quite ten minutes looking after the tall figure as it strode away over the veld. Afterwards he was heard to assert that Providence had without doubt moved him to act as he acted that morning. No man was ever more conscientious in the performance of his duties than this man, yet here was he lingering in the sunshine, gazing after a departing acquaintance while his pupils idled their time away waiting for him in vain.

Mr Burton held no class that morning.

As he was about to turn back to his work he saw a strange sight. The figure he was watching suddenly threw up its arms and fell and lay upon the veld quite motionless, so that had he not seen the falling of it he would not have known that it was there. And galloping away from the spot where the man had fallen was another man seated on a raw-boned white horse.

The schoolmaster was no athlete, but he put foot to ground and ran for all he was worth.

Chapter Twenty Seven.

Colonel Grey lay in bed smoking his customary before-breakfast cigar. He was not an early riser—or, as he expressed it, he had had so much early rising during his life that he was justified in taking his leisure.

He was unaccountably thinking of Lawless and the letters. He still half-trusted and half-doubted his man. That is to say, at times his belief in him was unbounded, and again at other moments, according to his mood, he mistrusted the man’s honesty of purpose. Reckless, impecunious, an admitted adventurer, were not the chances even that if he got hold of the letters he would turn them to his own purposes? With such a source of profit in his possession, would he be likely to give it up for the sum originally agreed upon between them? Colonel Grey could not altogether conquer his suspicions; the man’s past life had prejudiced him.

While he lay thinking, sending clouds of blue smoke-rings up from the pillow like smoke from a sacrificial altar, the bell of his front door was rung loudly and imperatively. As it was not answered with the promptitude that could only have been possible had a doorkeeper been stationed in readiness, the bell pealed again. Colonel Grey got out of bed and went to the window. He had already paddled out of bed once to admit his boy, for no servant slept in the house; and he paddled across the room a second time, jerked open the window, and looked out. It was with an involuntary exclamation of surprise that he recognised Tom Hayhurst.

“Good Lord!” he ejaculated.

And then, in accents of anger:

“What the devil are you pulling that bell down for?”

Hayhurst came forward, saluted the irate speaker, and followed him into the bedroom.

“I thought I paid you to clear out,” the Colonel observed sharply, eyeing with no great favour the spruce, confident young man he had last seen—or so he imagined—with a bandaged head, taking his passage to Durban.

“You did, sir.”

Hayhurst controlled his countenance with difficulty. In dealing with the Colonel he made it a practice to allow him to let off steam first. It gave a man a chance of second place, he used to say.

“Then, why in hell are you back here? ... I’ve no further use for you.”

“I’m not asking you to use me,” Hayhurst answered coolly. “I came by Lawless’ orders, to give into your own hands the packet of letters which I’ve just received from the Bank.”

He put his hand inside his coat as he spoke, and withdrew a sealed packet from an inner pocket, which, in a matter-of-fact manner, he tendered the Colonel. The Colonel nearly collapsed at sight of it. The cigar dropped from his lips, his mouth fell helplessly open.

“The—letters!” he gasped.

He stretched forth an eager hand that shook with his excitement, and almost tore the packet from Hayhurst’s grasp.

“Sit down, my boy,” he said... “Sit down.” He turned the packet lovingly. “Good God! the letters—at last!”

Breaking the seal with fingers that in their feverish eagerness could scarce perform their office, he glanced through the contents, counted the letters, and finally, going to a drawer and unlocking it, he took out a notebook to which he referred continually while he went through the packet again.

“It’s all right,” he said... “They’re all here.”

He snatched up a box of matches, and carrying the letters to the grate, thrust them between the bars and set light to them. Hayhurst watched with him while they burnt, dividing his attention between the flaming papers and the intent set face of the man who crouched before the hearth, watching, watching, while the letters that had cost much money and a man’s life were swiftly reduced to ashes. When only the charred and blackened paper remained, Colonel Grey took the ashes up in his hands and crumbled them to powder. He drew a long breath of relief.

“They’ve cost dear,” he muttered,—“too dear... But they’ll do no more harm.”

He rose and, turning, stared into the young man’s eyes.

“A moment since,” he said, and his voice trembled with an emotion he could not altogether subdue, “it seemed to me that nothing mattered outside that,” and he pointed to the ashes in the grate. “Now I’m back in the world again, and I want to know how you came to have them in your possession.”

“It’s a fairly long story,” Hayhurst said. “It’s taken weeks to bring to a successful issue.”

The Colonel shook his head.

“Don’t you get into the habit of drinking before breakfast, my boy,” he said.

Tom Hayhurst laughed. His eye had certainly travelled towards a syphon and bottle of whisky that stood on the washstand.

“You don’t know what I’ve been through,” he said. “Besides, I have breakfasted. And I’ve been strict teetotal practically ever since I’ve been working with Lawless. It was a condition he made in taking me on.”

The Colonel went to the washstand to cleanse his hands.

“Pity to break it,” he said. “But help yourself, if you’ve a mind to.”

When he had washed he got back into bed, and Hayhurst sat on a chair facing him, with a glass of whisky in his hand.

“We’ll have to go back to the beginning,” he said, “if you want to follow the yarn—that is, to the time when Lawless left Cape Town before poor Simmonds’ murder. You may remember he left Cape Town with a companion.”

“I do,” Colonel Grey answered drily. “I have reason to remember.”

“So have I,” Hayhurst rejoined.

“Indeed!”

“You see, I was with him,” he explained, taking pleasure in the Colonel’s open amazement. “We were in Stellenbosch together.”

“You!—With that she—”

“Devil,” prompted the young man cheerfully. “Yes! She wasn’t half a bad sort either. You mustn’t call her names. I’ve a sneaking affection for her.”

“I can imagine you would have.”

The Colonel snipped a fresh cigar, and lighted it, and lay with his hands clasped behind his head eyeing the youngster curiously as, in obedience to a nod, he helped himself from the box of cigars that stood on the table beside the bed.

“I suppose you wouldn’t believe me,” he hazarded, “if I were to tell you that that was the most platonic friendship Grit Lawless ever indulged in?”

“I should say that your ideas and mine of platonism were widely different,” was the response.

Hayhurst laughed.

“Did you ever see the lady at close quarters?” he asked.

“No... And have no wish to.”

“I fancy you are labouring under a mistake... You are looking at her now.”

He stroked his clean-shaven lip to hide his amusement, and his blue eyes smiled at the Colonel, who, in incredulous amazement, stared back at him from the pillow.

“I never reckoned myself an effeminate-looking fellow,” he said; “but I’m a tremendous success in petticoats—though it took a thundering lot of paint, no matter how carefully I shaved.”

“You lying young devil!” the Colonel ejaculated. “I don’t believe a word of it.”

“Van Bleit wouldn’t either,” Hayhurst answered, calmly sipping his whisky, “if I hadn’t changed my sex in front of him. I left him my hair as a keepsake... His friendship wasn’t as platonic as old Grit’s.”

The Colonel half sat up as a light broke in on him.

“And that,” he exclaimed with conviction, “is how you got hold of the letters?”

“No.” Tom Hayhurst leant forward with his hand on the counterpane, his boyish face flushed and eager. “All the credit for getting hold of the letters belongs to Lawless,” he said. “I was merely the decoy for leading Van Bleit into his hands. He managed the rest. He’s fine, Grit Lawless—a man... a white man. My conscience! you ought to have been with us yesterday and seen him handle Van Bleit.”

He furnished a description of the scene on the veld, and the Colonel listened in silence, save for an occasional appreciative grunt.

“And I left him,” the boy finished admiringly, “guarding the beast. He might have put a bullet into him and saved himself the trouble; instead of which I expect he has been sitting by him all night. I tell you, when Grit undertakes a thing he doesn’t half do it.”

Colonel Grey looked thoughtfully at the speaker. He was remembering how at their last meeting Lawless had said to him, with reference to Van Bleit, that he was keener on killing the man than anything else.

“I wouldn’t be too sure,” he said, “that he didn’t put his bullet into him after you were gone.”

But Tom Hayhurst had no doubts on that head.

“Grit isn’t the man to shoot another with his hands tied, and unarmed,” he said. “He wouldn’t even lash him so, although I wanted him to. I’ve got a blunter sense of honour, I suppose; but I don’t believe in being generous to swine like Karl Van Bleit.”

“No,” the Colonel agreed.

He smoked for a few moments in silence. Then he put the end of the cigar down in the ashtray, and flung back the bedclothes.

“You say you’ve breakfasted! It must have been a fairly early meal. You’d better stay and breakfast with me. When do you suppose Lawless will be coming down?”

“To-night, I expect. He didn’t say. But there’s nothing to keep him there. I shall meet the train anyway.”

“I’d like to see him.” The Colonel frowned thoughtfully. “Pity!” he said. “I’m dining out to-night—at the Smythes’. If it had been any other house I would have sent an excuse. But, owing to the trial, things have been a bit strained. To-night will be the first time I have been to the house since that affair... I can’t very well get out of it.”

“Leave early, sir,” Hayhurst suggested, “and come round to his hotel.”

“And suppose he shouldn’t arrive?”

“Oh! he’ll arrive right enough... If he doesn’t, I’ll manage to let you know.”

There was no happier man in Cape Town that day than Colonel Grey when he went into the city and cabled Home to the person it most concerned the news of success. It had taken months to accomplish at a terrific cost, but the matter was ended, and the incriminating letters were beyond reach for any purpose evil or the reverse.

Because his conscience accused him of having misjudged the man, quite as much as in recognition of his valuable services, he determined to use his influence with the greater influence behind him in getting Lawless some honourable occupation that would give him a fresh start. There was use in the world for men like that. The idea grew in his mind and took definite shape. He decided to talk it over with Lawless when they met and then write home. Whatever his past, he merited some consideration for his present services. The impulse of the moment is no correct index to a man’s nature, and only a crude sense of justice assigns life-long punishment for the sins of youth. In Colonel Grey’s opinion Grit Lawless had expiated his crime.

He went to the Smythes’ that evening with his thoughts still revolving around Lawless’ future, which quite suddenly had become of immense importance to him. It was his liking for the man, that strange unaccountable feeling he had had for him at their first meeting which, despite prejudice and later distrust, he had never managed to conquer, that made him so extraordinarily anxious to hold out a helping hand. Simmonds, the man who was dead, had had a similar regard for him; and the boy, Tom Hayhurst, in a more exaggerated degree realised the magnetic attraction of his personality. Given a second chance. Colonel Grey was fully convinced that Lawless would carve out a future for himself of which no man need be ashamed. It remained for him to see that a suitable chance offered.

By an odd coincidence the first person he came across in the Smythes’ drawing-room after greeting his hostess was Mrs Lawless. He was, he discovered later, to take her in to dinner. He had not seen her to speak to since the evening he had called upon her at the time of Simmonds’ murder, and he was not quite sure until she turned and spoke to him how he stood in her regard.

She was looking very lovely, but older, he decided. He had never observed anyone age as she had within a few months. There were lines in her face that had not been there when he first knew her, and her eyes were sadder, her bearing altogether less confident. Some people might have considered her less attractive on this account; but to him, in the clouded expression of the thoughtful eyes, in the thin line that ran from nose to mouth, there was a pathetic appeal that was infinitely womanly, and therefore more alluring than the proud defiance of youth.

She held out her hand to him, and smiled a welcome.

“I began to think that you and I were not to meet again,” she said.

“That is a very gracious speech,” he answered, “for it permits me the belief that you were not unwilling for a meeting. But there is a grim suggestion underlying the words that pleases me less. Is it my speedy dissolution you anticipate?”

“No,” she answered quietly. “But—I thought you might have heard—I’m going Home.”

“Indeed!” he said, and looked at her with quickened interest. “That’s news to me. Do you leave shortly?”

“Next week,” she replied slowly, her fingers entwining themselves in the silver girdle at her waist. “I never intended to stay very long, you know. I came to... Just on a visit.”

“And you return satisfied?” he asked, and knew not why he asked the question, nor why she should look at him so strangely with so sad an expression in the look.

“No,” she replied.

There was a perceptible pause. He pulled his heavy moustache, and his shrewd eyes met hers with a look of understanding and sympathy. He did not know what her purpose had been in coming out, but he felt she had followed no idle whim, nor sought merely health or pleasure from the visit. She had come, as he had come, for a definite purpose, and while he was leaving with his mission accomplished, she returned discouraged with her object unattained.

“I’m sorry for that,” he said... “If there is any way in which I can be of service to you...”

She shook her head.

“I go back as I came,” she said... “It was a venture. But at least I have the consolation of knowing that the attempt has been made. One can’t help one’s failures.” She looked into the grave, distinguished face and smiled. “We are in danger of growing serious,” she said.

“Look here,” he cried quickly, moved by some inexplicable and irresistible impulse, a sense of chivalry perhaps that her evident depression roused in him. “You say you are going home next week. I propose going also. If I can make my arrangements in the time, would it be agreeable to you that I should travel in the same boat?”

“You!” Her voice as well as her face expressed astonishment. “Then you—Have you accomplished your purpose in coming out?” she asked.

A glow of satisfaction overspread his features.

“I have,” he answered, and was conscious of feeling half ashamed to show his joy in the successful issue of his undertaking.

She rested her hand, oblivious of the people about them, for a moment on his arm.

“Oh! I’m glad,” she said... “I’m glad. That’s finished with. I have always felt those letters would cost another life.”

“God forbid!” he muttered, and added reassuringly: “They’re past doing harm now... They’re destroyed. I burnt them myself—to-day.”

She drew a long breath that was, he felt, a sigh of genuine relief. He looked at her curiously. He had never understood her interest in the letters, but he knew she was very greatly interested; and her relief in the knowledge of their destruction conclusively proved that in this matter at least she had no sympathy with Karl Van Bleit. He sometimes wondered whether he had not been mistaken in his opinion as to her feeling for Van Bleit.

“They are making a move,” he said to her. And then, as Theodore Smythe spoke to him in passing, he turned to her and offered her his arm. “I have the pleasure of taking you in,” he added.

And neither of them remembered, then or later, that his question as to travelling Home with her remained unanswered.

Colonel Grey left the Smythes’ early as he had arranged to do, and Mrs Lawless, who was going on elsewhere, took her departure at the same time.

“I am crowding all the dissipation possible into my last week,” she explained, but withheld the reason for this feverish activity.

He gave her his arm and led her out to the waiting motor. As he came out of the gate Tom Hayhurst, who had been dawdling about for him for the past half-hour, stepped quickly forward; then seeing who was with him stopped abruptly, and drew back. But Mrs Lawless had seen and recognised him.

“Mr Hayhurst!” she exclaimed, in a voice of surprise, and held out her hand.

“You were going to cut me,” she said, as he came forward again.

He laughed self-consciously. He was a fool for harbouring malice. Whatever part she had played in the matter of his broken head, she was an alluringly beautiful woman, and that in his opinion excused a great deal.

“Pardon!” he returned. “I was merely diffident as to my welcome.”

She suddenly smiled.

“I rather suspect,” she said, “that you are accustomed to being forgiven. I haven’t any faith in your diffidence.”

Hayhurst opened the door of the car for her and she got in.

“How is it you are not in evening dress? If you had been I would have taken you on to the subscription dance, which is where you ought to be, instead of hanging about other people’s doorways.”

“If I’d only known sooner...” he murmured regretfully.

She looked at Colonel Grey, who, grave and silent, stood behind the younger man.

“Can I drop you anywhere?” she asked.

“Thank you, no,” he answered. “I’ve an engagement with Mr Lawless at his hotel.”

Mrs Lawless started.

“He hasn’t come, sir,” she heard Tom Hayhurst saying. And then, in reply to an inaudible question: “I met the train. He wasn’t there. Van Bleit came by it.”

There was a muttered exclamation from the Colonel, and Hayhurst added:

“Yes! I don’t like the look of it myself.”

“Well, tell me presently.”

The words were spoken as a caution. Mrs Lawless leaned forward over the door, the light of the street lamp shining on her white face.

“Tell him now,” she said in a low voice. “I want to hear.”

Hayhurst stared back at her.

“There’s nothing to tell,” he stammered. “We expected Lawless by the train this evening... He didn’t come. That’s all.”

“Where is he?” she asked.

“At Kraaifontein.”

She thought for a moment.

“And Karl Van Bleit was at Kraaifontein too?”

“Yes... He’s back now.”

Mrs Lawless looked straight into the Colonel’s eyes.

“He got the letters for you,” she said, and he knew that she referred to Lawless though she did not utter his name.

“Yes.”

For the life of him the Colonel could think of nothing further to say. He was aware that the same suspicion that was in his own mind was in hers; and he had no reassurance to offer. He could find no word to supplement his bald affirmative. The pause lengthened.

“Another life!” she whispered... “I always felt—”

She touched Tom Hayhurst’s sleeve.

“Tell him to drive home,” she said, and sat back in her seat.

Colonel Grey stepped quickly to the door.

“Don’t worry,” he said... “I’m going up to-morrow... I’ll let you know immediately.”

The car drove away, and the two men were left staring blankly into one another’s eyes.

“What’s he to her?” Tom Hayhurst asked.

But the Colonel shook his head. Here was a complication he had not foreseen. They turned and walked on together. Hayhurst was excited and inclined to hunt up Van Bleit and have an explanation, but his companion quashed the idea.

“You are positive, I suppose, it was Van Bleit you saw?”

“Of course I am. I got quite close to him once, and he grinned at me. I tell you, I didn’t like that grin. I followed after him. I wanted to hit his face for showing his teeth at me, but he got into a taxi and drove off. He was looking sick too, beastly sick... There’s been foul play,—I’m certain of it. I’d have suspected it by Van Bleit turning up and Grit not; but when I saw that beast’s smug, vindictive grin, I knew it.”

“Well, I’ll find out to-morrow,” Colonel Grey said.

“I’m going up the line with you. If anything’s happened to Grit, whatever hole Van Bleit sneaks into, I’ll see he pays.”

Chapter Twenty Eight.

Colonel Grey flung a suit of pyjamas and a few toilet accessories into a handbag and started out for the station. He was very much perturbed. Against his judgment he was greatly affected by Mrs Lawless’ forebodings of the previous night; her softly uttered, prophetic—they seemed to him prophetic—words: “I have always felt those letters would cost another life.”

And as a foundation for this belief, Tom Hayhurst had turned up with his tale of suspicion and his unreserved misgivings that had insensibly given rise to similar doubts in his own mind. What a finish to a life of failure! ... If this, indeed, should prove the end! He recalled his recently formulated plans for the man’s future... the chance he had thought to give him; and a hard look came into his eyes, his lips tightened. Those ashes in the grate had indeed cost dear!

Tom Hayhurst was already on the platform when he made his appearance from the direction of the booking-office. He came forward quickly to meet him, his boyish face grave and concerned.

“I saw Van Bleit come out of the shipping-office when I passed on my way here,” he said. “I tried to stop him, but he eluded me, and I daren’t give chase for fear of missing the train. I take it he was booking his passage to England. He means clearing out... Looks queer, eh?”

Colonel Grey nodded briefly.

“It’ll take a bigger world than this for him to lose himself in, if he’s killed Grit,” the young man said.

They turned and walked the length of the platform side by side. The train was in the station, and passengers were leisurely selecting their seats. From the door of the booking-office as they came opposite to it, among a hurrying group of late arrivals, Mrs Lawless emerged, tall and composed and very pale, with a cluster of early roses, fresh gathered with the dew still on them, drooping in her hands. A servant accompanied her carrying luggage. It was evident that she too was going by the train.

The Colonel was the first to see her; Hayhurst in his preoccupation had eyes for no one. He stopped, regarded her in surprise, and raised his hat.

“Mrs Lawless!” he exclaimed. “You! ... Surely you are not thinking—”

She looked him steadily in the eyes.

“I am going to Kraaifontein, Colonel Grey,” she interrupted him—“to find my husband.”

It was not often that the Colonel was startled beyond all power of lucid expression, but in the extremity of his amazement words failed him.

“Your—Eh?” he said, and stood still on the platform and stared at her.

He felt a touch on his arm.

“Unless you want to be left behind, you’d better take your seat.”

Tom Hayhurst stood at his elbow, his blue eyes on the woman’s face, with a mingling of respect in them and wondering resentment. He hurried them to the train, opened the door of an empty carriage, and shut it on them with a bang.

“Send me a wire,” he said.

The Colonel thrust his head out of the window.

“You’re not coming?”

“No.” The young man gave an expressive glance in the direction of Mrs Lawless, seated in the far corner of the carriage with the fragrant drooping flowers in her lap. “Grit wouldn’t thank us for making a picnic, or a funeral party, of it with her there,” he said.

Colonel Grey understood.

“I’ll let you know immediately,” he promised, and sank back on the cushions, taking off his hat and mopping his much perplexed and perspiring brow as the train moved slowly out.

He looked across at Mrs Lawless. She was gazing out of the window at the sunny country as it swept past her view with eyes that saw nothing consciously, and with thoughts, he rightly conjectured, far away from her surroundings. He tried to think of her in this new connection that she had sprung on him so suddenly and for which he had been so wholly unprepared; tried, but failed to remember, what Lawless had said in respect of his relationship with her that had so entirely misled him. He recalled that he had asked point blank whether he was a connection of hers, recalled too the ambiguous answer to his question: “By marriage only.” Truly a man may usually be said to be related to his wife by marriage only. But the answer had been given with intent to deceive. And Lawless had said other things that had tended to turn his mind from any such suspicion. For private reasons he had desired to conceal the fact of his marriage.

It was long before Mrs Lawless turned her face in his direction; when she did he saw that her eyes were filled with a great hopelessness, and something that resembled dread. Unconsciously she fingered the roses in her lap, touching them with a nervous caressing hand.

“I am afraid,” she said, and looked at him wistfully. “I have never imagined anything like this... I thought I was going Home without ever seeing his face again. I had reconciled myself to that. And now... It ought not to be more difficult to part from the dead than to part irrevocably from the living. But it is.”

She looked down suddenly at the roses, and lifted them gently, and laid them against her face.

“I brought them for him,” she said simply.

“I think it would be wiser,” he returned, “not to make up your mind to misfortune. It is quite possible that when we arrive we shall find Mr Lawless in perfect health. There are absolutely no grounds for supposing otherwise.”

“I have a feeling that all is not well,” she answered quietly. “That feeling was with me throughout the night; and in my sleep I heard him call me... My own imagination! ... Yes, I know. He wouldn’t ask for me.”

She turned her face away and gazed out of the window again.

“Do you think,” she asked presently, after a further lengthy silence, and in her tone and manner it was apparent how great was the effort it cost her to touch upon the subject, “that she will be with him? ... that woman?”

Colonel Grey sat up suddenly as though a bomb had been flung at him. He had forgotten since his knowledge of Tottie’s identity that this thing had been an open scandal, and that she must know of it.

“Good Lord, no!” he answered. And added quickly: “There wasn’t any woman.”

He moved down to her end of the compartment, and leaning forward took both her hands and held them firmly.

“You haven’t allowed that to come between you?” he asked gently.

The tears rose in her eyes.

“It didn’t help,” she whispered... “But you see—I am going to him in spite of it.”

“It was a cruel thing to let you believe that,” he said, and dropped her hands, and sat back against the cushions, watching her. “I’ll tell you the story as I heard it myself yesterday.”

And he related to her unreservedly the history of Tottie and her connection with Lawless in the recovery of the letters. When he had finished he found that she was quietly weeping with her face hidden in her gloveless hands.

He left her to herself and returning to his former seat sat stiffly upright, staring out of the window with unseeing eyes beneath their knitted brows. It would seem that those letters had more to answer for than even he had supposed. He wondered whether, could he have foreseen all that this enterprise would involve, he would have consented to its undertaking.

There was a prolonged silence. Mrs Lawless rose after a while, moved by what impulse he failed to understand, and dropped the sweet scented roses from the window. She turned round and faced him after doing so, and he felt that already she regretted the act.

“They were dying,” she explained, and went nearer to him and sat down opposite. “It was a foolish thought to pick them.”

“It was a kind thought,” he returned.

She looked at him gravely.

“Colonel Grey,” she said, “a man must hate a woman when he can let her believe—what my husband allowed me to believe. Nothing less than hate could be so cruel as that.”

He looked her straight in the eyes.

“Dear lady, don’t you know,” he asked, “how closely love and hate are allied so that it is difficult to separate the one from the other? It is possible for a man to hate the woman who is dear to him. I’ve known such cases.”

“I can understand,” she said, and looked thoughtfully out upon the passing country, “moments of impulsive hate. But systematic hate... That’s different.”

She pulled at the strap of the window absently, and continued to gaze out at the scenery, while the shadows darkened the sun-flecked eyes, and memories stirred in their troubled depths that, far away now but still unsoftened, covered over a space of hopeless years. She had loved her husband with such an intensity of passion, and yet she had failed somehow to satisfy him. She had failed him most at the moment he particularly needed help and sympathy—at the time of his disgrace. Her love for him had had its root to a great extent in her pride in him. The fall of her pride was tremendous. His dismissal from the Service cut her more deeply than at that time of hysterical patriotism his death could have. The blow hardened her. Instead of loving encouragement, unsympathetic silence was all she offered. And he turned from her and sought comfort elsewhere. Another woman came into his life. Zoë Lawless did not know how brief had been that interval of madness. She had refused to hear explanations, had withheld forgiveness. He had written to her, offering facilities for her release. To that she had replied that if he wished it, if he desired to give the woman the protection of his name, she would submit to the humiliation of having their affairs dragged through the courts. He had answered that he was merely considering her, that he had no wishes in the matter, and should certainly not re-marry if she divorced him.

After that there had been unbroken silence between them, and she lost sight of him for many years. During those years, in the lonely watches of the night, she had often lain awake thinking of him, wondering about him; and her conscience had reproached her for throwing that undisciplined nature back upon itself. When, unexpectedly, under the will of an eccentric relative she inherited a comfortable fortune she determined to follow after him. She had heard from her cousin in Cape Town that Lawless was in Africa; and so she came to Africa to find him, with some vague idea in her mind that they might possibly pick up the dropped strands of their lives and interwind them anew. She had earnestly desired this until she met him. When they met she realised how vain had been her hope. And now it was all over... There remained only the bitterness of the empty years.

When they reached Kraaifontein, and the Colonel got out of the train and turned to offer her assistance, she hung back, white and nervous, and caught at the luggage bracket as though to save herself from falling. He took her by the arm and assisted her on to the platform.

“In a little while,” he said, with a view to encouraging her, “you will be smiling at your fears. Come now! be brave.”

He left her for a moment on the platform while he went to speak to an official. When he returned he endeavoured without success to mask his gravity behind a reassuring smile.

“We’ll walk,” he said, “it’s close here. I’ve arranged about the luggage.”

She looked at him swiftly.

“You’ve heard something,” she said.

“Nothing definite,” he answered,—“and nothing very alarming. There is a visitor at the hotel who has met with an accident. That tells us little, but at least it proves he is not dead.”

She took his arm and they started to walk.

“If he’s only slightly hurt,” she said, as they proceeded, “I’ll go back again. It would only anger him, my being here. But if he’s too ill to notice—then surely I may stay? ... You don’t think that I should do him harm by staying, then?”

Tears suddenly rose in her eyes, her voice broke.

“Oh! I’m so afraid,” she whispered. “Afraid most of all of his coldness.”