onplace flesh and blood, so
to speak."

"I asked him to dinner to-morrow," her uncle remarked.

"And is he coming?" with ill-concealed interest.

"No. He is going to see two young miners named Macaulay a few miles
away, and was regretfully compelled to decline," and the humorous
smile on his face widened, for he knew that Diana would be piqued.

"As if he couldn't go there any day!" she grumbled. "O, of course, he
is perfectly odious."

Meryl's eyes met her father's, and they both laughed, while he
remarked, "Never mind; perhaps we can lay a trap for him another time.
Evidently he has no particular fancy for ladies' company."

"Do you know the Macaulays?" Meryl asked.

"No, but I am going to see them in two or three days on business."

"And you will take us?..." she pleaded. "I do want so to see all we
can of the settlers as well as the country."

"We will see later," he said, and made a move to prepare for dinner.

During the next two days he and his engineer made sundry small
excursions on business. Their investigation of several outcrops in the
Victoria district had convinced them the gold was by no means worked
out by that ancient people who had left so many traces of mining
operations, and Mr. Pym was prepared to buy up claims and properties.
On the fourth day he went to see the Macaulays, and took the girls
with him, having procured a mule each for them to ride. Stanley and
Carew were also to be of the party; the latter not a little to
everyone's surprise.

All through the four days he had held consistently aloof, personating
merely the courteous official upon whom Mr. Pym had a certain claim
because of the letter from headquarters. As a matter of fact, he had
undertaken a journey of some length on two of the days to outlying
kraals; and Diana, hearing of it from Stanley, had laughed a little
grimly, and said, "He need not have troubled. We have no wish to speak
to him"; and Stanley, not quite clever enough to understand, remarked
regretfully, "But you would like him so much if you knew him
properly."

The reason was not very apparent for his accompanying them to the
Macaulays' mine, but Meryl shrewdly suspected her father, who had gone
quietly to smoke a pipe in the police camp with him on one or two
occasions, had asked him to come more or less as a personal favour.
For though Stanley knew the road perfectly he knew very little about
the surrounding country itself; and Mr. Pym, with his unerring