perching himself on
the side of the table and relighting his pipe. "What's this?" picking
up the official letters. "`With reference to your circular--um--um--
asking for a return of--um--um--' Those damn circulars! Every post we
get about twenty of them. Return! They'll soon want a return of the
number of buttons each official wears on his shirt,"--signing the
letters. "What's this? Another complaint? `Pound rescue,--Willem
Cornelia Gerhardus Van Wyk.' One of the biggest liars that ever trod
God's earth. I've fined him over and over again for licking his niggers
or trying to do them out of their pay or something; and you'll see him
in church on Sunday with a face as long as a fiddle; he's one of the
`elders,' too. He'll have to come in and swear this, though."

"He said he couldn't wait, sir, but he'll be in the first thing
to-morrow, before court time."

"Oh, that'll do just as well, as I wasn't here, I say, Musgrave, old
boy, we'll shut up shop and go for a walk. Got your pipe with you? Try
some of this tobacco. Yes, we may as well take it easy while we can; we
shall have enough to do next week with the monthly returns."

So away they started, leaving the little baked-mud town behind them;
away over the open veldt, with its carpet of wax blossoms, lying beneath
the slopes of the great hills which stood forth all green and gold in
the afternoon sun.

"What do you think of the new doctor, Musgrave?" said the magistrate at
last, as they were discussing things and people in general.

"Lambert? H'm! Well, strictly between ourselves--not much."

"Not, eh? I thought he seemed a nice fellow."

"I don't want to prejudice anybody against him, far from it; but I've
noticed that between two given people there often exists an antipathy at
sight. Now, Lambert may be a decent fellow enough in the main; but
between him and me that antipathy exists."

He did not add that from unerring signs he had taken the measure of the
subject under discussion, and that that measure was as mean as mean
could be.

"You don't take to Lambert, then?"

"No. But I know nothing against him, and so it wouldn't be fair to say
anything against him on the score of a mere instinctive dislike."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"How is it you didn't go out to the Suffields this afternoon, Mr
Musgrave?" said the magistrate's wife as, having returned from their
walk, they were sitting on t