"Then like many another you have proved `thought' a desperately
unreliable prompter. Candidly, my dear fellow, since you put it that
way, I don't care a twopenny damn whether you are in this country or in
any other. Now?"

Lamont spoke quickly and was fast losing his temper. He pulled himself
up with a sort of gulping effort. Ancram, noting this, could hardly
suppress the sneer which rose to his face, for he read it entirely
wrong.

"That fetched him," he was thinking to himself. "He's funking now.
He's probably got another girl out here, and he's afraid I'll blab about
the white feather business. All right, my good friend Lamont. I've got
you under my thumb, as I intended, and you'll have to put me in the way
of something good--or--that little story will come in handy. It'll bear
some touching up, too."

"I was speaking in your own interest, Ancram," went on Lamont. "Anyone
can see with half an eye that you're not in the least cut out for life
in this country, and you'd only be throwing away your time and money."

"Wish I'd got some to throw. I thought perhaps I might stop and do a
little farming with you."

"But farming needs some capital. You can't do it on nothing. It's a
losing game even then, especially now that rinderpest is clearing us all
out. Don't you know any people in Buluwayo who could put you into the
way of getting some job under Government, or in the mining department or
something?"

"Not a soul. Wish I did. But, I say, Lamont, why are you so jolly
certain I'm no good for this country? I haven't had a show yet."

"Oh, I can see. For one thing, if you start pounding the niggers about,
like you did Zingela yesterday, you'll get an assegai through you."

It came to him as an inspiration, in pursuance of their plan of the
previous day. And Ancram was green.

"No! Are they such revengeful devils as all that?"

"Well, they don't like being bashed, any more than other people. And--a
savage is always a savage."

"By Jove! What d'you think, Lamont? Supposing I gave this chap
something? Would that make it all right? Eh?"

"Then he'd think you were afraid of him."

And to Lamont, who knew that the gift of a piece of tobacco and a
sixpence would cause honest Zingela positively to beam upon his
assailant of yesterday, the situation was too funny. But he wanted to
get rid of the other, and the opportunity seemed too good to be lost.
The scare had begun.

"You have got a jol