pedition into the Gaika location, he had given
substantial guarantee that the record might be a true one. And if in
any way this consideration influenced the virtuous public of
Doppersdorp, why, it only showed that, among that agglomeration of
mischievous turnip-heads, there lingered even yet a stray grain or so of
wisdom.

Still his position was an unpleasant one, and grew daily more so. Here
and there would be somebody not ill-disposed towards him, but, beyond a
feebly apologetic defence when he was out of hearing, they did not care
to say so, let alone to parade their sympathy, fearing public opinion or
their own women-kind, who in turn feared Mrs Shaston; for of such are
the wheels which revolve within each other in the small community.

Now the tongue of Mrs Shaston wagged oft and freely enough to have laid
her open to any number of distinct actions for slander. But although
Roden had asserted his intention to "take it fighting," he was growing
more and more sick of the whole position every day. This wretched poky
little hole-and-corner village, where people grovelled away their lives
by the score of years at a time; what was it to him? What was this
handful of shopkeepers and pettifogging practitioners, whose main
ambition was to squeeze a few extra shillings out of the unwary native,
or the wooden-headed Boer, on some pretence just falling short of
legally fraudulent, and not always that? Why, nothing, of course--less
than nothing. A month after leaving it he would have forgotten that
such a place ever existed, have forgotten it utterly and entirely.

All but for one consideration; and that he owned to himself, both in
sorrow and in wonder, would never suffer him to forget this passage in
his life as long as that life should last. In sorrow, because
unaccountably he had a chill presentiment that even that stay would fail
him in the hour of need. In wonder, because it seemed little short of
miraculous that, having left the cream of life behind him with the
capacity for faith and warm trust, he should have been required to take
up that life again almost, as it were, from the very beginning--should
be called upon to suffer the ordeal of trust and feeling, even after
losing all belief in the genuineness and durability of any such
transitory illusions.

Since the bursting of the bomb he had not seen Mona, nor bad he heard
either from or of her. The same held good of Suffield's household in
general. It a