d away at his
pipe, looking straight in front of him. The mist seemed lightening a
little above the river.

"Well, then, if the worst comes to the worst, and you have to leave
Seven Kloofs, what then? How will you stand? The sale of your stock
won't amount to anything like a fortune I take it."

"No, but it'll amount to something. After that--I have an idea."

"An idea. Pho! That for an idea. One plan's worth all the `ideas' in
the world."

Le Sage, you see, had got into his element now. His nervousness had
quite left him.

"Call it a plan then. And as to it I am hopeful. Why should a man's
luck always be bad, Le Sage. Why the deuce shouldn't good times dawn
for him? Ah! Look there."

Even as he spoke the mist, which had been lightening over the river,
parted with a suddenness that was almost startling, and from a widening
patch of vivid blue the newly risen sun poured down his life-giving
beams. It was as an instantaneous transition from darkness to light--to
bright, beautiful. Nature-awakening light--and with it the birds began
to pipe and call with varying note from the surrounding bushes, while a
troop of monkeys gambolling upon a sandspit down in the river-bed, were
amusing themselves by leaping its channel, to and fro, as though in
sheer gladness of heart. Further and further the mist rolled back,
unfolding a dewy sparkle upon bush and veldt, a shroud as of myriad
diamonds.

"Look--where?" queried Le Sage, shortly.

"Why, at how suddenly it became light, just as I was talking about my
plan--and luck changing. I'm not superstitious, but I'll be hanged if I
won't take that as an omen--and a good one."

Le Sage grunted, and shook his head in utter disgust.

"An omen?" he repeated. "Good Lord, Wyvern, what rot. Man, you'll
never be anything but a dreamer, and you can't run a farm upon dreams--
no nor anything else. Would you mind letting me into this `plan' of
yours?"

"At present I would. Later on, not now. And now, Le Sage, if you have
quite done schoolmastering me, I move that we go back. In fact, I don't
know that it was worth while our coming so far just to say all that."

"But you'll think so in a minute. It happens I haven't said all I came
to say, and as it has to be said, I may as well say it at once and
without beating around the bush. You must cease thinking of Lalante at
all. You must consider your engagement to her at an end."

Wyvern had felt nearly certain that