a present of fifty thousand dollars."

He showed the cheque he had written, with the figures clear and
large. And then, with leisurely motions, he tore it across and again
across.

"Much obliged," said Robert H. Lucas, and made for the door.

XI

THE MAN WHO KNEW

Bearded, bowed, with hard blue eyes that questioned always, so we
knew David Uys as children; an old, remotely quiet man, who was to be
passed on the other side of the street and in silence. I have
wondered sometimes if the old man ever noticed the hush that, ran
before him and the clamor that grew up behind, the games that held
breath, while he went by, and the children that judged him with wide
eyes. He alone, of all the people in the little dorp, made his own
world and possessed it in solitude; about him, the folk held all
interest in community and measured life by a trivial common standard.
At his doorstep, though, lay the frontier of little things; he was
something beyond us all, and therefore greater or less than we. The
mere pictorial value of his tall figure, the dignity of his long,
forked beard, and the expectancy of his patient eyes, must have
settled it that he was greater. I was a child when he died, and
remember only what I saw, but the rest was talk, and so, perhaps,
grew the more upon me.

One day he died. For years he had walked forth in the morning and
back to his house at noon, a purple spot on the raw color of the
town. He had always been still and somewhat ominous, and conveyed to
all who saw him a sense of looking for something. But on this day he
went back briskly, walking well and striding long, with the gait of
one that has good news, and he smiled at those he passed and nodded
to them, unheeding or not seeing their strong surprise nor the alarm
he wrought to the children. He went straight to his little house,
that overlooks a crowded garden and a pool of the dorp spruit,
entered, and was seen no more alive. His servant, a sullen Kafir,
found him in his bed when supper-time came, called him, looked, made
sure, and ran off to spread the news that David Uys was dead. He was
lying, I have learned, as one would lie who wished to die formally,
with a smile on his face and his arms duly crossed. This is copiously
confirmed by many women who crowded, after the manner of Boers, to
see the corpse; and of all connected with him, I think, his end and
the studied manner of it, implying an ultimate deference to the
conventions, have m