erson. In fact, you've no idea what running
against you like this means to me, apart from the ordinary pleasure of
meeting an old pal. Did the manager tell you how I got here?"

"Yes, and it struck me that a shipwrecked mariner leaving home suddenly
like you did might have come, well--hum!--rather unprepared, so I lost
no time in putting you right with Marshbanks. And now, what are your
plans?"

"Why, to get back home again."

"I wouldn't hurry about that if I were you. Why not come and stay with
us a bit? The governor'll be delighted, if you can put up with things a
bit plain. We can show you a little of the country, and what life on a
stock farm is like. A little in the way of sport too, though there's a
sight too many Kafirs round us for that to be as good as it ought."

"My dear chap, I shall be only too delighted. You can imagine how gay
and festive I've been feeling, thrown up here like a stranded log, not
knowing a living soul, and with seven pound nine and a halfpenny--and
that already dipped into--for worldly wealth until I could hear from
home."

"By Jove! Is that all? Well, it's a good job I spotted your card on
Marshbanks' table."

"Here, we'll have a drink to our merry meeting," I said, rapping on the
table by way of hailing the perspiring barman aforesaid. "What's yours,
Matterson?"

"Oh, a French and soda goes down as well as anything. Only, as this is
my country, the drinks are mine too, Holt. So don't put your hand in
your pocket now. Here's luck! Welcome to South Africa."

We had been schoolfellows together, as Brian Matterson had said, but the
three or four years between our ages, though nothing now, had been
everything then. I remembered him a quiet, rather melancholy sort of
boy on his first arrival from his distant colonial home, and in his
capacity of new boy had once or twice protected him from the rougher
pranks of bigger fellows. But he had soon learned to take his own part,
never having been any sort of a fool, and, possibly by reason of his
earliest training, had turned out as good at games and athletics as many
bigger and older fellows than himself. We had little enough to do with
each other then by reason of the difference in our ages, yet we might
have been the greatest chums if the genuine cordiality wherewith he now
welcomed me here--in this, to me, distant and strange country--went for
anything.

We strolled round to the bank, and the manager was full of apo