mont has
been putting him up since Peters picked him up in the mopani veldt,
nearly dead with thirst. Saved his life, in fact. I know it's Ancram,
because he pitched me the same yarn--of course `in strict confidence.'
Confidence indeed!"

"What a cur!" pronounced Clare. "Oh, what a completely loathsome cur!"

"Hear--hear!" ejaculated Driffield.

"Cur or not," said Fullerton, who over and above his dislike of Lamont
was naturally of a contradictious temperament,--"cur or not, the story
has a good deal of bearing on what we know out here--"

"If it's true," interjected Clare, with curling lips.

"--He left a kid to drown. Said he wasn't going to risk his life for a
gutter kid--and wouldn't go in after it even when the girl he was
engaged to implored him to. She called him a coward then and there, and
gave him the chuck. This chap Ancram saw it all. He was there."

"Then why didn't he go in after it himself?" suggested Clare, with
provoking pertinence.

"Says he couldn't get there, or something. Anyway Lamont's girl chucked
him then and there. She was the daughter of some county big-wig too."

"Of course I wasn't there," said Clare, "and the man who enjoyed Mr
Lamont's hospitality, as a stranger in a strange land, was. Still, I
should like to hear the other side of the story."

"What if it hasn't got another side?" said her brother-in-law shortly.

"What if it has? Most stories have," answered Clare sweetly.

"Anyway," struck in Driffield, "Ancram's no sort of chap to go around
talking of other people funking. I took him on patrol with me the other
day from Lamont's. Thought he'd like to see something of the country
perhaps, and the Matabele. Incidentally, Lamont lent him a horse and
all he wanted for the trip. Well, the whole time the fellow was in the
bluest of funks. When a lot of the people came to _indaba_ us, he kept
asking whether they might not mean treachery, or had arms concealed
under their blankets. As to that I told him yes, and legs too."

Clare went off into a ringing, merry peal.

"Capital!" she cried.

"Oh well--" said Driffield, looking rather pleased.

"But he was in a terrific funk all through. The acme of it was reached
the night we slept at the Umgwane drift. Ames voted him a devil of--er,
I mean a superlative nuisance. He kept waking us up at all hours of the
night, wanting to know if we didn't hear anything. We had had a big
_indaba_ that day with Tolozi and his