him tooth and nail, Darrell especially,
who feared no man living, and between whom find the new official many a
passage of arms would occur, of increasing fierceness and frequency.

With the farmers, too, he was unpopular. Mr Van Stolz, himself a
Dutchman, had been pre-eminently the right man in the right place. Mr
Shaston, however, was utterly devoid of that bluff, open-hearted species
of blarney which is the right way to the Boer heart; consequently, by
that stolid and wooden-headed race, he was regarded as the most stiff
and starched type of the _verdommde Engelschman_. Moreover, rightly or
wrongly, he soon acquired a reputation for favouring the native
servants, as against their white employers, in such cases as came before
him; which reputation once established on the part of a magistrate is a
very death knell to his popularity among the Boers, and scarcely less so
among their fellow English stock-raisers.

Some among the townspeople he condescended to admit to a certain degree
of friendship. Among these was Lambert, the District Surgeon, also
Sonnenberg; both of whom toadied him fulsomely, for they began to see in
the new R.M. a possible weapon for striking a deadly blow at the object
of their respective hate. His dislike of his subordinate was by this
time patent, and both worthies now began to chuckle; for they foresaw
the not far distant removal of the latter from Doppersdorp. Not that
this would satisfy the malice of the vindictive Jew; nothing would,
short of the ruin and disgrace of his enemy. Since the gun episode,
resulting so signally in the biter being bit, and bit hard, Sonnenberg
had cudgelled his crafty and scheming brain to hit upon a plan, but
hitherto in vain. As postmaster, the thought had crossed his mind that
he might in some way or another strike at his enemy through his
correspondence. But then the latter never received or despatched any
correspondence; never from month's end till month's end. This in itself
was singular, and set the Jew thinking.

Now, if there was one individual whom the change of administration
concerned almost more than all the rest of the community put together,
that individual was Roden himself. No more was the daily routine
lightened by an occasional cheery talk, the ever-present joke, and the
sociable pipe, and above all by the most perfect of mutual good feeling.
This he was prepared for. But when his new superior began to show his
hostility in the most