Chapter II: Part 2

At seven o'clock next morning, Darrell was marched as usual to the river-bank to carry water up to the magistrate's house and the public works. Drearily and hopelessly he laboured at the wretched work of filling the water-carts. What did that note mean, he kept asking himself? How could that English girl in a strange country help him? Perhaps she was acting for others, he thought, and the only part she took was to give him notice. If so she might not run any great risk of getting into trouble. But this theory had to be put on one side. Who was there in the country, or for the matter of that in the world who would take the trouble to help him? He looked at the distant range of hills far away across the river; if he could only get there he would be free and safe, for not only was it native territory, but it was in a disturbed state, and there were bands of men collected together there, one or two of whom he happened to know who would welcome him as a comrade very heartily. The men worked at their tasks slowly enough; the convict-guards thought that they might just as well hang about the river-bank looking after convicts, as be anywhere else engaged in the same dreary work, so they did not hurry them. After he had worked for some minutes, Darrell saw two figures on horseback across the river; he recognised one of them as Kate, the other was a young Dutchman he had seen ride towards the farm a day or two before. He looked at their horses, and he coveted the one the Dutchman was on. It was a good horse anywhere, and looked as if it were just suited for the country. If he were on it and had a fair start, he would save the Colony the cost of his board and lodging, and show his enemies a clean pair of heels. Of course he remembered the letter, but he felt sure the young Boer would never be induced to help him. After they had ridden along the river to a place about a hundred yards down stream from where he stood, he saw the man dismount and leave his horse to be held by his companion. Darrell began to feel a thrill of excitement as he watched him go down to a boat, get into it, and drop some way down stream. He watched how the stream of the river ran, and he guessed how it would carry any one who jumped in from where he was, across to the point where Kate was with the horses. The Dutchman had almost crossed the river, and was pulling up a fish on a line he had rowed up to. Darrell took in the situation, and his heart beat, and he felt a longing for liberty as he first looked at the good horse on which he could secure it, and then at the convict-guard near him who was yawning sleepily, as he sat with his carbine in his hand. Just then he saw Kate hold her handkerchief above her head and wave it. It was the signal, and he knew how good a chance he would have if he obeyed it. There was no time for delay, and in a second he had taken a header from the bank and was swimming for life and liberty. For a minute or so there was some wild shooting, as the guard aroused by the splash took a hurried shot at him, and the Zulus let off their guns recklessly.

The sound of the shots startled Jappie, who had been intent on pulling up his fish. For a second he stared stolidly, and then as the convict came to the other side, hitting just upon the spot where the horses were, he saw what his object was.

"Allah Macter, but he is going to take my horse. Hi! Miss Gray, gallop the horse away; keep away from him, he's going to take the horse." The guards on the other side had ceased firing, as they were afraid of hitting Kate and the horses. Kate did not make any attempt to get away from the convict; in fact Jappie felt certain that she was doing her best to help the fugitive. Jappie yelled and gesticulated, but it was no use. To his disgust he saw the convict come up the river-bank, jump into the saddle, and give a shout of triumph, and then go off across the veldt. Above all things, Jappie valued and swaggered about his horse. He had won one or two races with him already, and hoped to win more, and he was never tired of boasting and bragging about what he hoped to do with him.

"O the skellum!--O the scoundrel!--there is not a horse in the province that can catch him, and there is no one ready to follow him," he shouted out to no one in particular as he splashed clumsily across the river against the stream. For once he thought of Kedult's pace and staying powers without much satisfaction. When he had got to the other side he stood shouting and yelling to the convict-guards, and watching Darrell growing smaller in the distance. It was something of a relief to him when he saw two troopers of the border police cross the drift. They had saddled up when they heard the alarm of the escape, and were starting in pursuit. Jappie ran after them, and shouted out some directions to which they paid very little heed.

"Ah, they will never catch him on Kedult; he will ride the horse to death first," he despondently said as he watched the troopers ride across the flat. Kate began to realise that she had probably got herself into a good deal of trouble, for the part she had taken in the escape was pretty evident. She did not know what offences she might not have committed, still she felt that she would gladly do it again, and chance whatever punishment she might have to suffer, rather than have to see Darrell suffering his degrading punishment. Certainly he would be a fugitive and an outlaw, but that would not be so bad for him, and he would have a better chance of proving his innocence than if he were a prisoner; so she hoped.

"Well, Miss Gray, so you have played me a nice little trick, letting that skellum steal my horse. That was your doing. You think yourself very slim to be able to fool me into leaving you with my horse, so that you could let your sweetheart have it to get away on; but you have made a mistake--I am going to go to the magistrate, and he shall know what you have done. You will find yourself in prison very soon for stealing my horse and helping a prisoner to escape," said the young Boer to Kate, when he met her at the door of the farm-house as she rode back. He was half crying about the loss of his horse, and desperately angry; and yet, as he looked into the pretty English girl's face, a very different idea to that of revenge suggested itself to him. There was something he cared for even more than his horse.

"Look here, miss, you have lost me the best horse in the country, but I forgive you, because you're such a pretty girl. No Dutch girl would do what you have done; they would be ashamed to; but I like girls who have plenty of pluck. Be my sweetheart instead of that skellum's, whom you will never see again, and I will say no more about what I saw. Look, I am rich; I have some of the best claims in the mine, and have ten good farms. I think there is no girl in the Colony who would not marry me, and I offer to make you my wife--a poor little English girl, whom I could send to prison if I thought right. Come, I have lost my horse and won a frow, for you must marry me or go to prison--which will you do?"

To emphasise his declaration he threw one of his clumsy arms round her neck and tried to kiss her. Her answer came in a way that surprised him. She dodged away from his grasp, and as he came forward again she slashed him twice across his face with her whip, and then ran away into the house, leaving him standing in the yard listening to the laugh of a Kaffir servant who had witnessed the scene.

"All the worse for you, missy," he cried, almost blubbering from the pain and from his anger. "You shall suffer for this, and for stealing my horse." Then catching sight of the Kaffir's grinning face he relieved his feelings by cutting that unfortunate son of Ham across the back with his ox-hide whip till he yelled with pain. Somewhat calmed by this he walked down to the boat and went over to Gordon, determined to let the law of the land revenge his wrongs.

It turned out that his threat was not an idle one. Already the inhabitants of Gordon were discussing the part she had taken in the escape of the convict. One of the guards noticed her give the signal, and his evidence was confirmed by Jappie.

Johnstone, who had been acting as magistrate, cursed his fate which obliged him to commit Kate to take her trial at Kimberley. But the affair was a serious one, and became more serious when the next day the border police came back without having found their man.

"It's a beastly duty to have to discharge, particularly for such a pitiful screw as one gets from this cursed Colonial Government. But I had to do it on the evidence," he said to her when the inquiry was ended, and she was duly committed to take her trial, and circumstances allowed him to resume his non-official way of looking at things. "You need not be nervous, however; jury won't bring themselves to convict you," he added, to reassure her.

The case created immense excitement at Kimberley. From the first public feeling was with the prisoner. Jappie was considered to show great vindictiveness, and the story of his having been an unsuccessful suitor to the prisoner somehow got abroad. He had got his horse back too, it having been sent to him from Stellaland, and this, in the opinion of the public, made the animus he showed all the more vindictive. When the day of the trial came on, and the prisoner was seen in the dock, public opinion expressed itself most unanimously in her favour.

The Crown prosecutor's arguments were very cogent, and the judge's summing up dead against the prisoner; but the jury gave their verdict without ever turning round in the box. It was _not guilty_.

"There ain't such a crowd of pretty girls in this camp that we can afford to shut 'em up in prison," was the opinion expressed by the foreman as he partook of champagne at the expense of a sympathiser with beauty in distress.

In the mean time George Darrell found himself secure in Stellaland. After riding all day he had pulled up with his horse dead beat, at a house which had once been used as a store some miles on the other side of the river which marked the border of Griqualand West. The house was inhabited by some white men, who constituted themselves into a body which somewhat resembled the free companies some centuries back-- nominally fighting for the Kaffir chief, but really pretty much for their own hand.

"Hullo, who the devil is this?" exclaimed one of these warriors, who was sitting on the bench outside the house as Darrell came up.

"Hullo, he has got 'em on--he has got 'em all on," said another of the company--a gentleman who in the course of his varied career had been a singer in a London East End music-hall, and now sang the songs of Houndsditch in a strange land--as he saw the fashion of Darrell's garb.

"Look here, it won't do; it will bring the peelers on us."

"He's a good fellow; I know him--worth a dozen of you," said a black-haired, handsome, devil-may-care-looking young fellow, known as Black Jamie, who acted as the leader of the company. "It's Darrell, who used to be working down the river. I heard he was `run in' some time ago,"--and getting up, he came forward and shook the new arrival heartily by the hand.

It was lucky for Jappie that Black Jamie had a high opinion of Darrell; for it was on that account he was induced to give in to the other's wish that the horse should be sent back by a Kaffir to his owner--a proceeding which was thoroughly repugnant to the feelings of himself and the honourable company he commanded. He let Darrell have his way, however, and then sent him on with some Kaffirs to their huts, where the police, even if they crossed the border, would not care to follow him. A day or two afterwards, when danger of pursuit was over, Darrell was enlisted as one of Black Jamie's troop in the service of Mankoran, the chief of the Bechuanas.

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Chapter Three.

"So it seems that the Cape Colony was very nearly saving us the trouble of looking after poor Tom Gray's girl," said the Rector of Morden, Warwickshire, to his wife, who sat opposite to him at the breakfast-table, as he put down the newspaper he had in his hand. The Warners of Morden Rectory were distant cousins of Kate, and the Rector had been her father's greatest friend at college. When they had heard of his death they had written out offering Kate a home, for they were kindly people, and as they only had two boys of their own, they thought she would not be in the way.

"Poor girl, it was very foolish of her to make herself so notorious; however, I like the way she writes. I should not say there was anything sly about her," answered Mrs Warner.

Kate Gray had, in answer to their invitation, written to them, telling of the trouble she had got into, and confessing that though the jury had acquitted her, she really had helped the convict, whom she believed to be innocent, to escape.

"It is sensible of her to send the newspaper report of the trial. After all it's just the sort of thing her father would have done at her age," answered the Rector; and his thoughts went back to his old friend, with whom he had got into many scrapes in their old Christ-Church days.

Mrs Warner was inclined to take rather a more serious view of the affair, but for all that she agreed with her husband that it would be best to have their cousin home to stay with them; and so she was advised to come home as soon as she could, and forget all about her adventure at the Cape, in the pretty Warwickshire village. She was glad enough to accept their offer, for though she had become a heroine at the Cape, she found that heroines were rather at a discount as governesses, and that it was difficult to see what she could do with herself there. So two years from the day of her trial found Kate quite at home at the Rectory, and happy enough in her new life.

"The Watsons are going to bring a friend with them to tennis, I forget his name," said Mr Warner to his wife one day at luncheon. "He seems rather a pleasant sort of man. I met him at Coventry the other day; he comes from the Diamond Fields, where he made some money. I wonder whether you ever met him out there, Kate?"

Kate looked troubled. It occurred to her that more people were likely to know a young lady who had stood in the dock in a criminal court than she knew; and in consequence she did not feel over comfortable at the idea of meeting any one who came from the Diamond Fields.

The others understood her embarrassment, though they tried to persuade her that there was no reason for her fears. "People who have known one another at the ends of the earth would never tell tales. I should say that rule would be kept for mutual convenience," said Mr Warner, who, like many an untravelled Englishman, believed that the goings on of those living in distant lands were, as a rule, such as they would wish to keep dark at home. However, Kate showed so much apprehension of a meeting with a man who might remember the trial, that they did not dissuade her from keeping away and avoiding it. So it happened that in the afternoon she was sitting in a school-room by herself, waiting securely there until the visitors had gone away again. She had heard them arrive, and heard a voice in the hall which she knew must belong to the Watsons' friend from the Cape, and it had seemed somehow to be familiar to her ear. She sat with a book before her, reading very little, and thinking a good deal of the events of two years before, which now seemed so far off--of the long journey across the veldt, of the scene at Jagger's Drift, and then of her trial at Kimberley. What had become of the man for whom for some motive she could hardly fathom she had risked so much? Likely enough he was buried under the South African sand, or perhaps he was taken again, and was working out his sentence. Again his figure came back to her mind, dressed as he was when she last saw him, in coarse canvas shirt and trousers decorated with numerous broad arrows and other Government marks.

Just then she heard her aunt's voice from the garden, shouting out to some one in the hall.

"Second door to the right, as you go in, you will find the rackets; no, left I mean." Whoever was being spoken to did not hear the last words, for instead of going into the room where the rackets were kept, he opened the door of the room she was sitting in. It seemed to her as if her thoughts had taken bodily shape, for there stood the man she was thinking about. He seemed to her to be dressed as he had been when she had seen him last, for his flannel and soft hat had much the effect of his convict garb.

"At last I have found you, and I have been trying to find out where you were for the last year," he said.

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"I thought you were still looking for the rackets, and came to show you where they were kept. I need not introduce my cousin to you, as you seem to have made each other's acquaintance," said Mrs Warner, as she came into the room some ten minutes afterwards.

"Yes; we were old friends in South Africa," answered Darrell.

"I hope you will persuade her to come and play tennis. Do you know you were the cause of her staying away? She was afraid of meeting you because of that foolish business of hers about a convict's escape, which I suppose you must know all about," said Mrs Warner.

"Yes; I know a good deal about it, for I happen to be the convict. Don't be alarmed, though--I am quite a respectable person now, for thanks to Miss Gray, I have proved my innocence and got a pardon."

Mrs Warner looked somewhat dubiously at her guest. The hero of Kate's adventure was the last person she had ever expected to entertain in her house. Ex-convicts, even when they have not escaped, but have duly served their sentences, are not thought desirable acquaintances; on the other hand, her guest was perfectly well accredited and she liked his looks. Altogether she was inclined to think Kate less foolish than she used to do; and she did not attempt to prevent her from being persuaded to join the rest of the party in the garden.

Darrell did not play tennis that afternoon. Sitting on a low garden-chair he told Kate his history since the moment she had seen him lose himself in the distance as he rode for his liberty. His life in Stellaland had been full enough of adventure, but nothing had happened that had any particular effect on his history, until one day when he was sitting with some of his companions at the house he had first seen them at. He was feeling rather sick of his life, although he liked the excitement and adventure of it, and he was willing enough to fight for Mankoran, who was being left in the lurch by the English, to whom he had always been loyal, and attacked without any cause by Boer freebooters who wanted his land. He was getting rather tired of the lawlessness of his companions, who cared more for what they could make than for the justice of their cause, and were not too particular about whom they took plunder from, so long as they could get hold of it.

As he sat smoking his pipe, and wondering what would be the end of his life, a man drove up to the door in a cart, and giving the reins to a Kaffir who was with him, got out and walked into the store.

Darrell recognised the man at once. He was the man Seers who had trapped him. At last he had a chance of finding out something about the plot of which he had been made a victim.

Seers walked into the house, and then started back in no little terror, for he found himself in a nest of hornets. There were two other men besides Darrell whom he had helped to get into trouble when he was acting for the police. They were both inside, and as soon as he saw them Seers ran back and jumped into his cart before Darrell could stop him. The man Seers had recognised was an American, who they called Colerado Joe--one of the most reckless ruffians of their band. As he caught sight of his enemy he made a rush for him, but was too late. Then he ran back to the house for his carbine, and followed by the other man, who was also armed, began to fire at the cart. Three shots were fired, and one of the horses fell down dead. Colerado Joe with a yell ran up to the cart, which had come to a stop.

Things looked like going pretty hard with Mr Seers. He had been hit pretty badly, but his condition did not commend him to the pity of his enemies.

"Guess we'll hang him at once, before the others turn up. It's more our affair than theirs; eh, Pat?" the American said to his friend.

The other took pretty much the same view, and they were both somewhat entertained by the ghastly terror of Seers. Just then Darrell came up. When Seers saw another of his victims appear on the scene he felt his position hopeless.

Darrell, however, was by no means inclined to allow the mouth of the man who had given false evidence to be closed for ever. He stuck to the point that Seers' life should be spared, and after the matter had nearly ended in a fight, he was allowed to have his way.

"Well, that carrion ain't worth fighting about. If you want him you can have him, but he won't be much use to you long," the American said, as he turned away, followed by his mate.

Darrell picked up the wounded man, took him to the house and looked after him.

The wound, however, which he had received, turned out to be a fatal one, and when Seers became satisfied that he was not going to recover, he made a clean breast of it.

"You have a nasty bitter enemy in Kimberley, I don't know whether you know it--that fellow Joe Aarons. He has a down on you, has Joe. He knew my game--that I was working for the detectives--and he came and offered me a hundred if I'd trap you. I had been sent down the river to look after what was going on down there, and it didn't seem a very hard job, so I went in for it. You found a little just about the time you were run in. Well, that was--thanks to me. I put those diamonds amongst the gravel you were washing. They were police stuff, and the police knew you sold 'em. When it actually came to trapping you, it wer'n't so easy. But, lord, those police, when you have done a bit in their way, get to believe in you wonderful. I worked it; bless you, I hid the coin that I swore you give me near the tent, and after I had slipped the diamond down, I got out the money and then I hollored out for the police. The clearest case he had ever seen, the blessed beak said. Well, it were clear like the three-card-trick is clear. It wer'n't fair, and I am sorry for it, only that Joe Aarons shouldn't have come down with his hundred. I always had a weakness for a lump sum. It was the only time I ever went wrong while I was working for them. But bless yer, as soon as I began to do a bit of buying again on my own account, they are down on me, and I, like a fool, cleared for this country. I'd have done better to have stopped in Kimberley and done my sentence. I see that as soon as I come across that devil Colerado," the man said in a husky, quavering voice.

Darrell managed to get a border magistrate to come up and take the deposition before Seers died. With this evidence he easily got his sentence quashed. After that he had gone back to the river, where he did fairly well, and putting what he made at the river into some claims in one of the mines, just before a sudden rise in their value, he managed to make a fairly good thing of it.

"I have to thank you for everything. I should still be wearing convict's clothes if it had not been for you. I have felt ashamed of myself when I have thought how I rode off and left you to get out of the trouble you might have got into how you could. I never could hear what happened to you after the trial. I have been longing to thank you," he said, when he had come to the end of his story.

"My trouble was not very great," she said; and she began to think that it would have been better if she had never met him again. She remembered their last conversation.

"I have wanted to tell you something. You remember when we last talked to one another on the road up to the Fields. That story I told you of is all over; the person I told you about then is dead."

Their minds both went back to that conversation on the veldt, and they took up their story as it had been left off then. Before it was time for Darrell to say good-bye, they had settled how it was to end.

Story 2.

KITTY OF "THE FROZEN BAR."

Some years ago there was at Kimberley a very popular house of entertainment, called `The Frozen Bar,' which had been in existence since the early days of diamond-digging, and had become one of the institutions of the Fields. From a mere bar it had grown into a hotel-- bedrooms having been put up in the compound behind it, and a dining-room opened for the use of its boarders. Still the old name--which had been a happy thought in the old days when ice was unknown and yearned for on the Fields--was retained. So far as it was possible for an iron house under a blazing South African sun to be kept cool, it justified its name. Ice, when the ice-machines had not broken down or the ice-manufacturers gone on the spree, was very plentiful there. Hot brandies and sodas were never served out. And it was always refreshing to see its proprietress, pretty little Kitty Clay, who was always cheery and bright, however trying the times or the weather might be, and would look fresh, clean, and cool even in the misery of a Diamond Field dust-storm.

`The Frozen Bar' was used by men who as a rule did not care to frequent common canteens and rub shoulders with the people who were to be met with in such places. Bad characters fought rather shy of it. For instance, Jim Paliter, the gambler and sharper, who was always lurking about to look for some unwary one who would first shake the dice for drinks, and afterwards to while away the time throw for sovereigns, never made it his hunting-ground. His self-assurance was proof against a good deal, but Kitty's quiet way of letting him know that his room was preferred to his company was too much for him. I.D.B.'s, as that section of the Kimberley public who live by buying stolen diamonds are called, did not care to use it, unless they were prosperous and in the higher walks of their trade. It was situated near the Kimberley mine and the diamond market, and all day long it did a roaring trade. The crowd who thronged its doors was representative of Kimberley, for it contained men of many different races and types. Men came there dressed in every description of costume, from moleskins, flannel shirts, and slouch hats, to suits of London-made clothes sent out from home by West End tailors. You would see the rugged, weather-worn faces of men who had been diggers all over the world wherever the earth had yielded gold or precious stones, and the dark, hungry-eyed, bird-of-prey-like faces of Jews who are drawn to the spot where men find precious stones as vultures are drawn to a corpse. It was in the afternoon, just after luncheon, that the place would be most crowded. Then Kitty would be in her element, taking money, though more often `good-fors,' answering questions, chaffing, and laughing over the news of the day--the latest scandal or the best joke against some one--and making comments upon it, very often more humorous than polite. Poor, cheery, big-hearted little Kitty, the best woman in the world--so many a man said, and with some reason. Maybe she used to laugh merrily enough at stories she ought not to have listened to, and the remarks she made were perhaps not over womanly, still no one could deny that she had a tender woman's heart. In the early days of the Fields, when hardships were greater, and the ups and downs of life were more marked, there were many who had good reason to be grateful to her. She had been a friend in need to many a man who from illness or accident had been pushed down and was likely to be trampled upon in the fierce struggle for existence in the first days of the rush to the new diggings. There were generally boarding at the `Frozen Bar' one or two men for whose custom the other licensed victuallers did not yearn--men whom Kitty had known in their brighter days, and whom she would not go back upon because they were down on their luck and out of a billet.

She was nearer thirty than twenty, and her life had been rather a hard one, though it had left very few traces on her bright little face, and her troubles had not made her laugh less cheery or her smile less kind, though perhaps they had caused that dash of cynicism which sometimes showed itself in her talk. She had begun life as a ballet-girl in a London theatre, had travelled half over the world with a theatrical company, and at Cape Town had married a Diamond field man who had taken her up to Kimberley.

Her husband, whom she had never cared for much, turned out anything but a satisfactory one. But her married life did not last very long. Less than a year after her marriage, a middle-aged female arrived on the Diamond Fields and laid claim to her husband, and as she was a person of great determination, and was able to prove that she had married him some years before in London, she carried him off in triumph, leaving Kitty to find out whether or no a bad husband was better than none at all. Kitty would probably have answered this in the negative, for she was very well able to take care of herself. She started `The Frozen Bar' and prospered there, and if she had only been good at saving money would have become quite a rich woman.

One evening there were several men lounging in the bar listening to Kitty's chaff and stories, when some one started a subject which made her look a good deal graver than usual. "So your friend Jack is back again in the camp," one of her customers had said.

"Jack--which Jack? there are a good many Jacks on the Fields, you know," Kitty answered; but with a note of trouble in her voice which suggested that the other's words had conveyed some news to her that she was sorry to hear.

"Jack Douglas, I mean. He has let his prospecting job down the river slide, and he is back in the camp again, and he has been back for a week, and been on the spree all the time."

"How that chap has gone to the bad! I remember him when he was quite a decent fellow, and to-day I saw him with some of the biggest thieves in the camp--Jim Paliter, Ike Sloeman, and all that gang."

"Mark my words, we shall see Jack Douglas run in for I.D.B. some of these fine days; he is going that way pretty quick," another man said; and there was something in his tone and expression as he spoke which irritated Kitty into showing a good deal of feeling.

"Why do you talk about my friend Jack? I don't have friends, only customers, and when they have spent their money and gone to grief there is an end of them so far as I am concerned. But he used to be your friend Jack once upon a time; why don't some of you fellows try and give him a help instead of pointing at him, and saying he has gone to the bad?" she said.

"Oh, he is no good; he has gone too far to be helped,"--"It's all his own fault,"--"He will never do any good here, he ought to clear out," were the answers to Kitty's suggestion. The men, though they talked slightingly enough of Jack, looked, one or two of them, half ashamed, for Jack had been a popular man on the Fields in the old days when he owned claims and was not badly off, and the men who discussed his fate so coolly had once been glad enough to be his friends.

"Clear out indeed! Where to? To the devil for all you care. That is so like you men; that is how you stick to a friend."

"Listen to Kitty; why, she seems to be quite sweet on Jack Douglas. Look out, Kitty, he would not be a good partner in the business; why, he'd precious soon drink up the profits," said a little Jew who had been listening to the conversation though no one had been speaking to him.

An angry flush came across Kitty's face. For once, she could not think of a neat retort, and she answered, showing that she was hurt. "Look here, Mr Moses or Abrams, or whatever your name is, suppose you keep your advice till it's asked for. I never spoke to you when I talked about people helping Jack; no one expects one of your sort to help a man, and Jack would not care to take any help from you."

"Don't know about not wanting my help; he is glad enough to be helped by some very queer people," said the little Jew as he walked out of the place, grumbling out something about never coming in again.

"Douglas may be a fool, and he may have gone to the bad, but I hate to hear a little cad like that sneering at him," said Kitty; and then feeling that she had perhaps made rather a fool of herself she changed the conversation, and in a minute was laughing at some rather pointless story, chaffing another man about some joke there was against him, and seeming to be in the wildest spirits.

"What good fun that woman is; such a lot of `go' in her," said one of the men who had left the place to another as they walked home together. "I don't like to hear her," said the other, a man whose ideals were somewhat higher, though his habits of life were even more irregular than those of most men on the Diamond Fields. "She is such a good little woman--a deal too good to talk as she does."

These men would have been surprised if they had seen the woman they were talking about whom they had left in such high spirits. The place was empty, she was leaning with her elbows on the bar and her shapely hands covering her face, sobbing as if her heart would break. Yes, she thought, she was a fool to have cared anything for him or any other man. Were they not all either hard, selfish, and heartless, or reckless, prodigal, and hopeless?

With all her knowledge of the world she lived in, she had made what her experience told her was the most hopeless of mistakes a woman can commit, for she had let herself care a great deal too much for Jack, the ne'er-do-well and loafer, whose fate his old friends had been discussing. What they had said was probably true, she thought; it was no use doing anything for him. She had tried to help him. She had found some money to send him on a prospecting trip down the Vaal--not because she believed in the new mine he was prospecting, but because she thought it would be a good thing for him to get away from Kimberley--but here he was, having left his work to look after itself, back again in the camp at Kimberley, enjoying its pleasures such as they were. Yes, they were right, there was not much chance for him: his associates were about the worst lot in the camp. He seemed to be going the road which has taken so many a Kimberley man to the prison, yet she couldn't leave him to travel it. Ah, what a fool she was, she thought. She had forgotten to call her boy to shut the place up though it was late, and she hears a step at the door. At once she wipes her eyes and looks herself again.

He was a man of about five-and-twenty. Once he must have been very good-looking, and even then his face had some of its old grace about it. Now, however, it told a very ugly story plainly enough. It was haggard and worn with drink and dissipation, and he had a reckless, defiant expression as if he refused to show a shame he felt. Even for the Diamond Fields his dress was rather careless. One of his eyes was discoloured, while on his cheek he had marks of a more recent cut. Any one who knew colonial life could sum him up. An Englishman well-born, who has gone to the bad; a type of man to be met with all over the colonies, the man who has been sent abroad so that he should not disgrace his people at home. There are openings for such men abroad, so their kind friends at home say, and so there are;--canteen-doors, the gates of divers colonial jails, and then one six feet by two, not made too deep, the job being badly paid for.

Staggering up to the bar he asked Kitty how she was, and called for a drink. There was rather a sharper tone than usual in her voice as she told him that it was too late and that she was going to close. "You had better go back to the `Corner Bar,' that is more in your line than this place, isn't it?" she added.

"All right," he said, "I will clear out. I suppose I am not good enough for this shanty. So good night."

"Stop," she said, changing her mind as he turned to go away; "you needn't be in such a hurry; I want to ask you something. What are you doing--where are you staying now?"

"Staying? Oh, anywhere. I slept on the veldt last night; I am going to sleep at old Sloeman's place to-night. He is a good sort, is old Sloeman--don't turn his back on a man because he is down on his luck. I am going to work with him."

Mr Sloeman was the owner of some claims in one of the mines which nobody else had ever made pay, but in which, without doing much work, he professed to have found a great many diamonds. He also was the proprietor of a canteen of more than shady reputation, and had an interest in one or two Kaffir stores. Some people were unkind enough to suggest that the diamonds he professed to find in his claims were bought at his canteen, or at his stores, from Kaffirs who had stolen them from their masters' claims. Mr Sloeman was notorious for the kindly interest he took in likely young men who were out of work. He gave them a billet in one of his stores, or in his canteen, or as an overseer to work in those wonderful claims. Curiously enough a large proportion of those young men had attracted the attention of the detective police, and had found their way to the prison charged with buying stolen diamonds; but Mr Sloeman himself prospered.

"Stop, Jack, you are not going up there to-ight. One of my rooms is empty, you can have that. I wouldn't go up there to-night," said Kitty.

Jack said he would go--he was expected there.

"Stop, Jack, you're not so bad that you can't talk sense. You know what old Sloeman means, and what his game is. You have always been straight, whatever they can say of you. Don't have anything to do with that old thief!"

"Yes, and a lot of good being straight has done me. Old Sloeman is a good deal better than the lot who turn their backs on me, and, thief or not, I am going to work with him?" Jack said as he turned to leave the place.

Kitty gave a look at him as he lurched to the door, and then determined that she would have her way.

"Well, Jack, have a drink before you go. I am sorry for what I said just now. We will have a drink together," said Kitty, as she took down a bottle of whiskey and some soda-water. Jack did not refuse--he seldom did refuse such an offer.

"Well, that will about finish him. It seems a shame, but he shan't go up there to-night, and that will settle it," she thought to herself as she more than half filled a tumbler with whiskey.

"That is rather a stiffish drink," he said as he finished it. Then he had another, and forgot all about going up to Sloeman's, and Kitty called her Kaffir boy to shut up the place and put Jack to bed in the spare room.

The next morning, when she was at her breakfast, her Kaffir servant came running and showing his white teeth. "The _baas_ I put to bed last night, him plenty bad this morning, Missis."

"Take him this, he will get all right," said Kitty, giving him some brandy in a glass and a bottle of soda-water. "That won't hurt him, though he will have to knock it off and pull himself together, for this child is going to look after him," she added to herself.

Very soon the Kaffir came back. "The _baas_ he drink the brandy and throw de soda at me. I think him going mad," he said, rubbing his head.

Kitty was not much alarmed; she had seen a good deal of that sort of thing. She wondered whether it would be any good, if it were possible to persuade Jack to become a Good Templar. She felt afraid that it would not be very easy, and that he would shun the rejoicing there would be over him. He wanted some one to keep him straight, she thought, and woman-like, she began to believe that one of her sex could do it. After some time Jack came out of his room. He had a blank stare on his face and said nothing, but walked into the street without his hat on. He was evidently queer, very queer, Kitty thought, as she led him back to his room and then sent her boy for the doctor.

"He is in for a bad go of fever; rather a nasty case--typhoid symptoms; knocked his constitution to bits with drink," said the doctor. "He will want a lot of looking after. He had better go to the hospital--the free ward--the paying wards are full; not that they would be much in his line if they were not," he added.

"I think he had better stay here, doctor," answered Kitty. "I will see after nursing him; you know, doctor, nursing is rather my forte."

"No one can see after him better than you, my dear," said the doctor, who knew Kitty well. "I fancy, however, he won't be a very profitable boarder for you; but that's your look out."

"Oh, that is all right," said Kitty. "Come and see him again soon, doctor; remember I sent for you."

The doctor said he would come round again soon, and drove off--thinking what a good little woman Kitty was, and wondering whether there was anything more than pity in her feeling for that ne'er-do-weel Jack Douglas.

"I trust she don't care for him, for I am afraid there would be only trouble in it for her, however it turned out," he thought to himself.

The doctor was right; it turned out a very nasty case of fever, and for weeks it looked very black. For a time `The Frozen Bar' lost its popularity. Kitty was always afraid that her customers were making too much noise, and in fact she showed that she would be more pleased if they had kept away from her establishment altogether. She was very seldom to be seen behind the bar, and when she was, there was none of her old brightness and fun about her. The old merry, almost reckless, look had left her, and there was a more tender and soft expression in her face. She spent most of her time in a room behind the house--the coolest and best bedroom she had. Its late tenant, one of her most solvent boarders, had been somewhat disturbed and a good deal affronted at being moved out of it, but Kitty was determined to have it for the sick man, who for weeks was tossing on the bed in delirium. For a long time he did not recognise her or know where he was; he was a boy at school or a cadet at Sandhurst again. Then the delirium left him and he knew her, though he hardly seemed to ask himself where he was or how she came to be looking after him. Perhaps the hours that poor little Kitty spent nursing him as he got better were some of the happiest in her life. Then he was never happy when she was away from him, and he used to watch her as a sick dog watches its master. He seemed so different, so much more like what he had been once, and so unlike what he had become on the Diamond Fields. When he grew stronger and able to talk about how he became ill, tears came into his eyes when he thanked her for her kindness. "If it had not been for you I should have gone up to old Sloeman's place at the West End, and if I had not died there should have become one of his lot," he said. "How good you have been to me!"

As he grew stronger she began to think that he knew her secret, and there was something in his face which seemed to tell her that he felt something more than gratitude for her. Then she hardly ever came near him. He did not want any more nursing, she thought. It was the first day he had got out of bed; she had been talking to him about himself in her old cheery manner, telling him that if he choose to pull himself together there was no reason why he should not succeed and do as well as any one else, when what she had been half expecting for some time came.

"Hers was the only influence," he said, "which could keep him straight. He knew she cared for him. If she would marry him he would be able to keep away from drink."

Then she told him the truth. Yes, she did care for him, and would marry if he wished it. But first of all he must show her that he could reform; he must swear off drink, and what was more to the point, keep off it too. She wasn't any great shakes, she knew, but she wasn't going to marry a man who was always on the drink. She knew too much to do that, she said.

He promised that he would reform, and it was agreed that they were to wait for a year and then they were to be married and leave the Diamond Fields, and go to some other colony. He was no great prize, this shattered invalid, who was far more likely than not to return to his old ways. But Kitty, for all that, had a hard struggle with herself not to take him as he was, instead of waiting and perhaps losing him altogether. "No, she would not marry him there, it wouldn't be fair to him," she said; "she would wait till he was the man he was before he ever took to drink, and then if he cared to marry her she would be the proudest woman in the world."

Then she talked over a plan she had for him. She had bought some claims in the Dutoitspan mine, and he must work them for her. She said she was sure the ground would turn out well, and they would make lots of money.

He promised that he would turn over a new leaf, and he said and thought too that she was the kindest-hearted and dearest little woman in the world; and he felt eager to begin work, and show her what a splendid specimen of the reformed character he was going to become.

That is how Jack Douglas, who had utterly gone to the bad in the opinion of most men who knew him, got a start again.

Of course their claims ought to have turned out well, and they ought to have found a big diamond which would have made their fortune all at once. But Kitty's belief in the claims proved to be rather unfounded: some weeks they paid expenses, some they did not. Jack Douglas ought at once to have become a reformed character, but he did not. More than once work was at a standstill in their claims for days, and he had to come to Kitty, shamefaced and haggard, with a sad story of transgression to tell. But she persuaded him to try again, and did her best to keep him straight, and at last he became stronger and better. Men began to think that he had some chance, he had been steady for a long time. Kitty was going to succeed in making something of him. He began to take some pride in himself, and at the end of twelve months he was a better man than he had been for years.

At that time there was an outbreak of Kaffirs and Griquas on the border of the province, and troops were raised on the Diamond Fields. There was plenty of military enthusiasm. Times were bad, and the Diamond Fields answered to the call for men to serve their country at five shillings a day. Store-keepers who could supply uniforms, and transport-riders who had waggons and oxen, came forward to help their country in its hour of need at a considerable profit to themselves. For Douglas, the chance was just what he longed for.