admitted that Rhodesians are always on the look-out for an excuse for a
jolly, but this really seemed a reasonable occasion. They told him he
looked gloomy and needed a jolly to cheer him up.

"A picnic is the thing for you," said Berlie Hallett, who loved this
form of diversion better, even, than flirting. "Let us give him a
picnic in his own district, Selukine."

A thoughtful look crossed Marice Hading's face.

"What about his own mine?" she said. "Can't we come and picnic there,
Lundi? I have never seen the Leopard."

The idea was ardently welcomed.

"Yes--the Leopard mine! We'll take our own champagne and baptize the
new reef and Lundi's future fortunes. It shall be the great Leopard
picnic--the greatest ever!"

It was furthermore suggested that, as there was a moon, it should be a
moonlight picnic with a midnight supper at the mine.

Lundi was fain to submit, whether he liked, it or not. He wondered a
little what Emma Guthrie would say at having the mine invaded, but
personally he did not care a toss. The narcotizing spell had fallen
suddenly from him again, and life and his future fortunes looked
uninterestingly grey. He became aware of the shrouded figure tapping
for attention at the back of his brain. Gay was the cause of it,
somehow. He abruptly got up to go, saying he must get back to the mine.

"Emma will want some talking over before he will allow any picnicking
around there," he said. "I think I had better go and start on him
right away."

"Oh, don't go yet!" they cried, and Marice Hading looked at him
chidingly. But he had no heart for their gay arrangements, and took
himself off after finally hearing that the date was fixed for two
nights later, all cars to be at the "Falcon" at eight o'clock in the
evening and the start to be made from there.

Only a legitimate reason would have kept Gay away from a jolly given in
Druro's honour. But she expected to have that reason in the
indisposition of her father, who had been ailing for some time. She
was not sorry, for she felt a shrinking from what the picnic might
bring forth, just as she had felt on the night of Mrs. Hading's dance.

However, fate was not inclined to spare her anything that was due to
her. Colonel Liscannon was so much better that he could easily be
left, and, moreover, an old crony had come in from the country to spend
a couple of days with him. So there was no chance of Gay's evasion
without a seeming rudeness to