hen Hemmings had gone to his room, he jumped up
like a boy out of school. "So I'm going to get a wigging," he said; "I
suppose I deserve it; but if you knew--if you only knew...! Out here
they've nicknamed me 'the King'--they say I rule the colony. It's myself
that I can't rule"; and with a sudden burst of passion such as Scorrier
had never seen in him: "Why did they send this man here? What can he
know about the things that I've been through?" In a moment he calmed
down again. "There! this is very stupid; worrying you like this!" and
with a long, kind look into Scorrier's face, he hustled him off to bed.

Pippin did not break out again, though fire seemed to smoulder behind
the bars of his courteous irony. Intuition of danger had evidently
smitten Hemmings, for he made no allusion to the object of his
visit. There were moments when Scorrier's common-sense sided with
Hemmings--these were moments when the secretary was not present.

'After all,' he told himself, 'it's a little thing to ask--one letter a
month. I never heard of such a case.' It was wonderful indeed how they
stood it! It showed how much they valued Pippin! What was the matter
with him? What was the nature of his trouble? One glimpse Scorrier had
when even Hemmings, as he phrased it, received "quite a turn." It was
during a drive back from the most outlying of the company's trial mines,
eight miles through the forest. The track led through a belt of trees
blackened by a forest fire. Pippin was driving. The secretary seated
beside him wore an expression of faint alarm, such as Pippin's driving
was warranted to evoke from almost any face. The sky had darkened
strangely, but pale streaks of light, coming from one knew not where,
filtered through the trees. No breath was stirring; the wheels and
horses' hoofs made no sound on the deep fern mould. All around, the
burnt tree-trunks, leafless and jagged, rose like withered giants, the
passages between them were black, the sky black, and black the silence.
No one spoke, and literally the only sound was Pippin's breathing. What
was it that was so terrifying? Scorrier had a feeling of entombment;
that nobody could help him; the feeling of being face to face with
Nature; a sensation as if all the comfort and security of words and
rules had dropped away from him. And-nothing happened. They reached home
and dined.

During dinner he had again that old remembrance of a little man chopping
at a castle with his sword. It