ndergone the sponging as though he were merely
being washed, had now huddled his ragged shirt upon his raw and bleeding
back.

"He's a plucky fellow!" said Mr Van Stolz, going up to him. "Tell him,
Jan, that it will pay him best to be honest in future. But he took his
licking well. He can go now."

This the constable duly interpreted. But Gonjana seemed in no hurry to
enter upon the sweets of his newly restored liberty. He stood looking
at the magistrate with a queer, sidelong expression, his broad nostrils
snuffing the air. Then he said something in his own language. The
constable sniggered.

"He say, sir," interpreted the latter, "he say de lash hurt, but he not
afraid of being hurt. He say, sir--he very hungry. He hope sir will
not send him away without his dinner."

From the open windows of the prison kitchen the strong fumes of a
savoury stew were wafted into the yard, for it was the dinner-hour. The
gaol ration of meat and mealies was a liberal one, and it was noteworthy
that every convict who had completed his term of hard-labour came out of
prison sleek and fat, whatever might have been his condition at the time
of incarceration. Mr Van Stolz burst out laughing.

"Give the poor devil his dinner and let him go," he said. "He took his
dose well. It's little enough dinner I'd want if I were in his shoes,
eh, doctor?"

This to the district surgeon, who had joined them as they left the gaol.
He was a young M.D. named Lambert, a new arrival, newer even than
Roden, having been recently appointed. There was nothing specially
remarkable about him, unless it were a species of brisk
self-assertiveness which some might call bumptiousness, and which might
not altogether be to his disadvantage in a place like Doppersdorp, where
the District Surgeon was something of a personage, and apt to be toadied
accordingly. But between him and Roden Musgrave there was an
indefinable instinct of antipathy, which is perhaps best expressed in
saying that they had not taken to each other.

This feeling being, for the present at any rate, merely a passive one,
they found themselves strolling towards the Barkly Hotel together, Mr
Van Stolz having left them. Two ladies were seated on the _stoep_, who
as they drew near took the identity of Mrs Suffield and Mona Ridsdale.

"Well, Dr Lambert," said the latter, with a wicked look at Roden, when
greetings had been exchanged; "and how do you like Doppersdorp? But
there, I f