nce got sick of hanging around the Exchange and
talking scrip. He had no turn that way, wherefore now he was glad enough
to leave his affairs in the hands of Rainsford, who, being an inhabitant
of Johannesburg, was, of course, a broker; and, having picked up a very
decent No. 12 bore on one of the open-air sales aforesaid, laid himself
out to see what sport was obtainable in the surrounding country. This
was not much, but it involved many a hard and long tramp; and the
Transvaal atmosphere is brisk and exhilarating, with the result that eye
and brain grew clearer, and his condition became as hard as nails. And
as there is nothing like a thoroughly healthy condition of body,
combined with an equally healthy mental state,--in this instance the
elation produced by an intensely longed-for measure of
success,--Laurence began to realize a certain pleasure in living, a
sensation to which he had been a stranger for many a long year, and
which, assuredly, he had never expected to experience again.

For the market still continued to hum, and by dint of judicious
investments and quick turnings over, Laurence had more than doubled the
original amount he had put in. At this rate the moderate wealth to which
he aspired would soon be his.

And now, with the ball of success apparently at his feet, so
unsatisfying, so ironical are the conditions of life, that he was
conscious of a something to damp the anticipatory delights of that
success. Those long, solitary tramps over the veldt after scant coveys
of partridge, or the stealthy stalk of wild duck at some _vlei_, were
very conducive to introspection; that wealth which he imagined within
his grasp did not now look so all-in-all sufficing, and yet he had
deemed it the end and all-in-all of life. Even with his past
experience--the depressing, deteriorating effects, mental and physical,
of years of poverty in its most squalid and depressing form,
"shabby-genteel" poverty--he realized that even the possession of wealth
might leave something to be desired. In fact, he became conscious of an
unsatisfied longing, by no means vague, but very real, which came to him
at his time of life with a sort of dismayed surprise. He would give up
these solitary wanderings in search of sport. The sport was of a poor
description, and the intervals between were too long. He had too much
time to think. He would knock around the town a little for a change, and
talk to fellows.

One morning he was walking do