royal words:

'Young fellow, if there do be in you potentialities of governing, a
gradual finding, leading, and coercing to a noble goal, how sad it is
that that should be all lost. I have scores on scores of colonies. One of
these you shall have. Go and grapple with it in the name of Heaven, and
let us see what you will build of it.'

To Carlyle Sir George Grey might have gone, and laid at his feet South
Australia and New Zealand. He had been their fairy autocrat during
fourteen years; and the rugged outlooker at Chelsea would have admitted
them to be healthy brats. New Zealand having been fitted with her
Parliament, Sir George turned his face homeward, on leave of absence,
Selwyn a fellow voyager. Mother's boy and mother hoped to meet once more,
but it was not, to be. The Motherland had kept the servant too long on
duty, but he grudged her not even that.

'My mother,' said Sir George softly, 'had been in frail health for some
time, and I was always hoping to get home on her account. She heard that
our ship had been signalled in the English Channel, then that I had
landed, and she waited my appearance with loving expectation. My young
step-brother entered her room, and mistaking him for me, she grasped his
hand in thankfulness. The thing excited her, so very weak was she, and
her death took place before I could reach her. Happily, I had at least
the consolation that she believed she had seen me.'

The danger spot, in our over-sea territory, was now South Africa, where
British and Dutch were at odds with each other, and both at odds with the
natives. Affairs were a chaos. The region, grown historic as the
Transvaal, had been told to arrange its future as it would. The Orange
Free State had been kicked outside the British line of empire, with a
solatium in money, in the manner that an angry father bids adieu to a
ne'er-do-well son. A white man in South Africa hardly knew what flag he
was living under, or, indeed, if he could claim any. Panda, on the
Zululand frontier, growled over his assegai and knobkerry. Moshesh, the
Basuto, hung grimly on the face of Thaba Bosego, a Mountain of Night in
very truth. The embers of a Kaffir war still glowed.

Who was to hold the arena? Its hazards were thrown to Sir George Grey. At
the moment, he would, perhaps, rather have returned to New Zealand, but
he was told that somebody with the necessary qualifications must hie to
the Cape, and that the Government had selected him. He packe