ays after that evening visit of Pateley's to his sisters,
which had so gilded and transformed their existence, that sinister
rumours began to float over London, bringing deadly anxiety in their
wake. Telegrams kept pouring in, and were posted all over the town,
becoming more and more serious as the day went on: "Disturbances in
South Africa. Hostile encounter between English and Germans. Cape to
Cairo Railway stopped. Collapse of the 'Equator, Ltd.,'" until by
nightfall the whole of England knew the pitifully unimportant incidents
from which such tragic consequences were springing--that a group of
travelling missionaries, halting unawares on German territory and
chanting their evening hymns, had been disturbed by a rough fellow who
came jeering into their midst, that one of the devout group had finally
ejected him, with such force that he had rolled over with his head on a
stone and died then and there; and that the Germans were insisting upon
having vengeance. As for the "Equator, Ltd.," nobody knew exactly in
what the collapse consisted. The wildest reports were circulated
respecting it; one saying that it was in the hands of the Germans,
another that they had destroyed the plant that was ready to work it,
another again, and it was the one that gained the most credence, that
there was no gold in the mine at all, and that the whole thing was a
swindle. The offices of the "Equator" were closed for the night. They
would probably be besieged the next morning by an angry crowd eager to
sell out, but the shares would now be hardly worth the paper they were
written upon. Pateley, in a frenzy of anxiety, in whichever direction
he looked--for his sisters, for himself, for his party, for the Cape to
Cairo Railway--spent the night at his office to see which way events
were going to turn. In his unreasoning anger, as the day of misfortune
dawned next morning, against destiny, against the far-away unknown
missionaries, against all the adverse forces that were standing in the
way of his wishes, there was one concrete figure in the foreground upon
whom he could justifiably pour out his wrath: Sir William Gore, the
Chairman of the "Equator," who, in the public opinion, was responsible
for the undertaking. He would go to see Sir William that very day as
soon as it was possible. In the meantime he would go round to his
sisters to try to prepare them for the unfavourable turn that their
circumstances after all might possibly take. As, sor