d out unfortunately, and there was
nothing for him but to return to the diamond-fields.

Therefore he had gone back to London with the purpose of preparing
for his journey. A man does not start for South Africa to-morrow, or,
if not to-morrow, then the next day. He was aware that there must be
some delay; but any place would be better in which to stay than the
neighbourhood of Croker's Hall. There were things which must be done,
and people with whom he must do it; but of all that, he need say
nothing down at Alresford. Therefore, when he got back to London, he
meant to make all his arrangements--and did so far settle his affairs
as to take a berth on board one of the mail steamers.

He had come over in company with a certain lawyer, who had gone out
to Kimberley with a view to his profession, and had then, as is the
case with all the world that goes to Kimberley, gone into diamonds.
Diamonds had become more to him than either briefs or pleadings. He
had been there for fifteen years, and had ruined himself and made
himself half-a-dozen times. He had found diamonds to be more pleasant
than law, and to be more compatible with champagne, tinned lobsters,
and young ladies. He had married a wife, and had parted with her,
and taken another man's wife, and paid for her with diamonds. He had
then possessed nothing, and had afterwards come forth a third-part
owner of the important Stick-in-the-Mud claim, which at one time
was paying 12 per cent per month. It must be understood that the
Stick-in-the-Mud claim was an almost infinitesimal portion of soil
in the Great Kimberley mine. It was but the sixteenth part of an
original sub-division. But from the centre of the great basin, or
rather bowl, which forms the mine, there ran up two wires to the
high mound erected on the circumference, on which continually two
iron cages were travelling up and down, coming back empty, but going
up laden with gemmiferous dirt. Here travelled the diamonds of
the Stick-in-the-Mud claim, the owner of one-third of which, Mr
Fitzwalker Tookey, had come home with John Gordon.

Taking a first general glance at affairs in the diamond-fields, I
doubt whether we should have been inclined to suspect that John
Gordon and Fitzwalker Tookey would have been likely to come together
as partners in a diamond speculation. But John Gordon had in the
course of things become owner of the other two shares, and when
Fitzwalker Tookey determined to come home, he had done