earth
had Lalante come to that she should ride over, alone, to this man's
place directly his own back was turned, and--return with him late at
night? Now he had good ground for interference, and what his inner
consciousness told him was still better, a just grievance against
Wyvern.

"He'll be sold up," he said to himself in hot wrath, as he covered the
short distance which still lay between him and his homestead. "He'll be
sold up, and I'll buy the place--I will, by God, even if it's the only
rotten bargain I ever made in my life. I won't leave the chance to any
other fool, with some arrangement perhaps for keeping him on on the
halves. No--I'll buy it myself--although it won't be worth a tinker's
twopenny damn for years to come. Then he'll have to clear, and that's
what I want."

A Hottentot stable boy ran to take his horse as he dismounted at the
gate. Lalante came down the garden path to meet him. Her greeting of
him was unreservedly affectionate. Perhaps his own to her thawed more
than he was aware of.

"Come along in, father dear," she cried, hooking her arm within his, and
drawing him through the open door into the cool room beyond. "And tell
me how you got on. But first of all, you must have something after your
ride," unlocking a cupboard and producing a decanter of excellent Boer
brandy. "Now, did you pick up anything worth having?"

"Not bad in a small way. Couple of dozen slaughter-oxen of Piet Nel's--
he's in a bad way, you know, and obliged to sell I can turn them down
upon Hartslief at Gydisdorp, at an easy two pound a head profit, if not
more. There was nothing else quite worth taking on. Warren'll do the
delivery for me on very small commission."

He had thawed still more as he watched his daughter moving about,
ministering to his comfort. Any preconceived idea that Vincent Le Sage
was of the tyrannical order of parent may at once be jettisoned. He
was--as we have said--simply intolerant, to a fault, of the unsuccessful
man.

"Warren?" repeated Lalante, in some astonishment, as she placed the
porous terra-cotta water-bottle wits its fresh, cool contents upon the
table. "Was Mr Warren at the sale then?"

"No. I came back by his place."

There was a something in her father's tone, and the searching glance he
threw upon her face as he said this, that struck the girl as strange.
She had not expected him back by that particular way, but she failed to
connect the circumstance wit