their way out of shot, uttering their querulous
note. Further on, a duiker ram, slinking along not thirty yards
distant, a shot I could not have missed, yet I let him go. Later again
a large troop of guinea-fowl running for a prickly pear _klompje_,
where, had I followed them up, I should have been sure of at least a
brace. They too were left unmolested. The wild game of the veldt
seemed to be under a kind of "truce of God." As far as I was concerned,
I felt disinclined to take life that day.

I had reached the spot where I had shot my first bush-buck ram, somewhat
lower down in the Zwaart Kloof from the scene of the subsequent tragedy,
and here it occurred to me that I would dismount and smoke a quiet pipe;
in pursuance of which idea, feeling in my pocket for my pouch, my hand
came in contact with the letters I had put there that morning, still
unopened and totally forgotten. They were from England, but probably of
no importance--possibly some further and tedious delay as to the
transfer of my capital, but there was no such violent hurry about that.

The first mystified me, but very uncomfortably so. I believe my hand
shook as I tore open the second, and then--and then--I could feel myself
growing white and cold--everything was going round. A blow on the head
could hardly have stunned me more. For, before I got half through the
contents of that horrible communication, I realised the hideous fact. I
was a ruined man. The solicitors to whom had been entrusted the
transfer of my capital had defaulted for a huge amount, an amount beside
which my little all was a mere sixpence, and every farthing of the said
"little all" was in their hands. Beyond a few pounds in the bank at
Fort Lamport, and the value of the few head of stock I had running on
the place, I was penniless.

I stared at the hateful characters of the communication and shrank from
reading it again. Yet I did so, and by its light the first I had opened
stood explained. It was too explicit. The whole had vanished--vanished
utterly. Not even a halfpenny in the pound would any composition
afford.

What of the golden dream in which, but a moment ago it seemed, I had
been enwrapped? What of the happy, healthful, independent life I had
been mapping out? And, of course, what of Beryl?

All--all had vanished. No more thought of independence for me. As a
man without means I must be at the beck and call of others, content that
way merely to earn a