esent
crisis. He made no effort to penetrate the cause of that
determination. He merely yielded to it. A doctor less wise would
have ordered Weldon into bed. This one saw further. He knew that a
delicately adjusted machine often receives its worst damage from the
friction needed to stop the whirring wheels. Better to wait and let
them run down, untouched.

The forty miles from Kroonstad to Lindley were reducing themselves
from a geographical fact to a matter of physical and mental anguish.
There had been no rain for days, and under the burning sun, the
dusty veldt seemed dancing up and down before Weldon's tired,
feverish eyes. Now he passed through a stretch of bare and
burned-out sand; now he tramped over patches of tall dry grass; now he
plodded wearily around a heap of smooth black stones. Brick-red
ant-hills higher than his knees dotted themselves over the veldt, their
shell-like surface shielding a crowded insect colony within.
Ant-bear holes lurked unseen in his pathway, tripping his heedless
steps; and an occasional partridge went whirring upward, making him
start aside in causeless terror at the unwonted sound. And over it
all rested the glaring, shimmering, blinding light, laden with
myriad particles of dazzling red-brown dust. Later still, the
red-brown color vanished, and he walked for weary leagues over the
fire-blackened veldt where the black rocks offered no contrast to the
eye, and where the air was heavy with ashes caught up and scattered
by the light breeze which heralded the coming night. And it was all
so lonely, so hostile, so limitless. But no more lonely and hostile
and limitless than the desolate future which stretched away and away
before his gaze.

As yet he dared not trust his mind to rest too much upon the past.
The future demanded his whole attention. It was a far cry for him
from the present up to his limit of threescore years and ten. Still,
he would not funk it now. That was the part of a sneak. Now, as
always, he would stand by his young resolution to play out the game,
to abide by the rules and to take the consequences. Nevertheless, it
would be weary work to play out the game to its end, when the end
held nothing for him in its keeping. His mind trailed off upon all
sorts or vague corollaries scarcely connected with the fact. He
recalled it with a jerk.

The Captain was dead. Ethel had loved the Captain. She had told the
Captain of her love. As consequence, she could not love hims