n days."

"If I am, Mr Van Stolz, it's thanks to the kindness and patience you
have shown to an utterly inexperienced hand, in teaching him what to do,
and how to do it."

"Oh, no one can be expected to know all about a thing by instinct. Some
men expect absurdities. A new clerk is appointed to them who knows
nothing whatever of his work, naturally, and they don't give him a
chance to learn. They expect him to have everything at his fingers'
ends the day he joins the Service, as much as if he had twenty years of
it at his back. It isn't fair on a young fellow; though by the way,
you're not a young fellow either, Musgrave. Some men at your age are
already Civil Commissioners."

The remark, though made in perfect innocence, and with no ulterior
thought whatever, was one of those which caused the hearer to shrink
imperceptibly into his shell. Though he had been ten days in the place,
not a soul in Doppersdorp knew a thing about him, beyond that he was
entirely new to the Service. It was a rare thing for a man of his age
to start in this, and at the salary of a youngster. It was a rare
thing, too, in a place like Doppersdorp, for a man's private affairs to
be so thoroughly a sealed book; there where everybody knew as much about
his neighbour's concerns as he did about his own, ofttimes a great deal
more.

"I've always got on well with my clerks," pursues Mr Van Stolz, "except
one, and I worked the oracle so as to get him changed; but, with that
exception, they have always been sorry to leave me, even when it meant
promotion."

The boast is a very pardonable one because true. The man who could not
get on well with Peter Van Stolz could get on with nobody. An excellent
official, he was the most genial and unassuming of men, and with such of
his subordinates as were gentlemen he was more like a comrade than an
official chief. They were all fellow Civil Servants, and he held that
there should be a strong _esprit de corps_ among such. Himself of Dutch
extraction, he was the right man in the right place, in charge of a
district ninety per cent, of whose population consisted of Boers. He
was deservedly popular, for he held the scale evenly between all parties
and all nationalities, whether Boers, natives, or British, and in his
judicial capacities, wherever it was possible with due regard to strict
justice to err on the side of indulgence, he was sure to do so. In
outward aspect he was a little man, sturdy and