ave meant a breach of friendship, for
Lawson was very proud of his birth. When he first made his fortune he
had gone to the Heralds to discover his family, and these obliging
gentlemen had provided a pedigree. It appeared that he was a scion of
the house of Lowson or Lowieson, an ancient and rather disreputable
clan on the Scottish side of the Border. He took a shooting in
Teviotdale on the strength of it, and used to commit lengthy Border
ballads to memory. But I had known his father, a financial journalist
who never quite succeeded, and I had heard of a grandfather who sold
antiques in a back street at Brighton. The latter, I think, had not
changed his name, and still frequented the synagogue. The father was a
progressive Christian, and the mother had been a blonde Saxon from the
Midlands. In my mind there was no doubt, as I caught Lawson's
heavy-lidded eyes fixed on me. My friend was of a more ancient race
than the Lowsons of the Border.

"Where are you thinking of looking for your house?" I asked. "In Natal
or in the Cape Peninsula? You might get the Fishers' place if you paid
a price."

"The Fishers' place be hanged!" he said crossly. "I don't want any
stuccoed, over-grown Dutch farm. I might as well be at Roehampton as
in the Cape."

He got up and walked to the far side of the fire, where a lane ran down
through the thornscrub to a gully of the hills. The moon was silvering
the bush of the plains, forty miles off and three thousand feet below
us.

"I am going to live somewhere hereabouts," he answered at last. I
whistled. "Then you've got to put your hand in your pocket, old man.
You'll have to make everything, including a map of the countryside."

"I know," he said; "that's where the fun comes in. Hang it all, why
shouldn't I indulge my fancy? I'm uncommonly well off, and I haven't
chick or child to leave it to. Supposing I'm a hundred miles from
rail-head, what about it? I'll make a motor-road and fix up a
telephone. I'll grow most of my supplies, and start a colony to
provide labour. When you come and stay with me, you'll get the best
food and drink on earth, and sport that will make your mouth water.
I'll put Lochleven trout in these streams,--at 6,000 feet you can do
anything. We'll have a pack of hounds, too, and we can drive pig in
the woods, and if we want big game there are the Mangwe flats at our
feet. I tell you I'll make such a country-house as nobody ever dreamed
of. A m