, don't you know--extend the business. Storekeeping's the most
paying thing in the world if you only know what you're about. I've
always intended to extend as soon as I could get hold of some decent
fellow, and that lout Smith's of no good," sinking his voice. "I'm
getting rid of him. Then, when you know your business, I might take you
into partnership, and we might run houses all over the Colony."

To a practically penniless lad, who had just come out there to seek his
fortune, this was very glowing, very tempting sort of talk. Gerard
began to see himself already coining wealth, as the other had said "hand
over fist," and again he felt ashamed of his first unfavourable
impressions of the man who was now so freely holding out to him a
helping hand.

But when he set to work in real earnest, he discovered, as many another
had done before him and will do again, that the royal road to wealth, if
sure, was desperately slow, and to one of his temperament intolerably
irksome. The whole day, from early morning till long after dark, was
spent in the close atmosphere of that stuffy room, rendered foetid by
the chronic presence of uncleanly natives, and such unsavoury goods as
hides, sheepskins, etc., handing things over the counter in exchange for
the hard-earned sixpences and threepenny-bits of his dusky customers.
Now and then, too, a white traveller or transport-rider would look in to
make a purchase, and the short, offhand manner of some of these would
try his temper sorely. Was it for this he had come out to Natal? Where
was the free, healthy, open-air life he and his young companions at home
had so glowingly evolved? He remembered the envy with which his
schoolfellows had regarded him when they knew he was going out to a
colony. Would he be an object for envy if they could see him now? Why,
he was more of a prisoner than ever he had been when chained, as he
thought, to the school desks. He had, in fact, become nothing more nor
less than a shopkeeper.

Smith had in no wise seemed to resent the presence of his supplanter.
He was even impassively good-natured, and in his stolid way would give
Gerard the benefit of his experience. He put him up to all the little
tricks of the native customers, and showed him innumerable dodges for
lightening his own labour. As for books, why, there were none to speak
of, or at any rate they were precious queerly kept, he said. Anstey
would just clear the till when he thought th