forgot about him altogether. All my life I never remember hearing him
mentioned; and as my mother did not return to Bowshott until I was
nearly eight years old, very little may have been said to her that
would recall the fact of the boy's death.

'It is the beastly uncertainty of it,' he continued, as he rode slowly
home on the dusty track which was the apology for a road across the
camp. 'If the estate pays me sufficient to live upon I needn't
grumble; but Purvis must give me an account of what he has been doing,
and put me in possession of the facts of the case. One always
distrusts the middleman, and wonders if he is making a good bargain on
both sides. A small man like Purvis always tries to be important, and
to make every one believe that he alone holds the key to mysteries, and
that no one can get on without him. I don't at present see how he can
defraud either me or my brother, even if he wants to; but I am not
going to be content with hints or suggestions, as if I were living in a
penny novelette.'

He rode slowly home through the heat that rose like a palpable gas from
the scorched ground, until the little estancia house hove in sight
again. He found that Toffy and Ross were still enjoying their
afternoon siesta. There was not a bit of shade anywhere, and the heat
seemed to burn through the roof until the very floor was hot to walk
upon. His thoughts went back to Purvis in his tweed clothes and the
bowler bat with the pugaree on it, and he wondered how he fared in the
scorching heat. Probably the anaemic little man hardly knew what it
was to be too hot. He used to ride over the camp when even the peons
did not show their heads out of doors, and his hands were always cold
and damp to the touch. Peter drank some tea and sat down at little
Mrs. Chance's writing-table in the drawing-room, and wrote to Jane.
There was a feeling of storm in the air, and he envied the two men
sleeping luxuriously in the corridor.

'When you have been out here a year or two,' said the sleepy voice of
Ross from the depths of a long cane chair, 'you will find that letters
are not only impossible but unnecessary. No one expects to hear from
one after the first month or two, and if one did write there would be
nothing to say.'

'When my creditors get too troublesome,' said Toffy, also waking up, 'I
shall emigrate here and lose my own address. With strict economy one
might live very cheaply in Argentine.'

Lara's boy, who