lest.

Her Sisters blest! Of them what shall I say?
I like them better when they keep away,
And toil in their own lands, not loll in hers.
They use her ill. She's not so old as they.
She drudges for them. But her youth confers
A charm on her they've lost these many years.

THE THING THAT HATH BEEN

What's the good of him?' said the bar-tender to me. 'If he could
tell us how the Ruins came he might be worth a forty-pound cheque
every month, or at least a twenty one. But he can't.'

We were discussing the new appointment of a Government Curator at
the Mabgwe Ruins. I approved it, the bar-tender did not. I
pleaded that he was a bit exacting, that the Curator had a very
cold scent to puzzle out, and that he had tried plodding about
from ruins to ruins, moling and sapping and mining, not to speak
of writing to the Rhodesian Press. Afterwards I shouldered my
knapsack, sought counsel with my carriers as to ways and means,
crossed the river and took the Ruins road. A motor-car hurtled
past me when I was within two miles. Its driver had been pointed
out to me as a Jo'burg magnate; his passengers I did not know,
but I was soon to know them. I was the first to reach the Ruins
after all; for their arrival time being one o'clock, and their
halting-place a hotel. Civilization demanded that they should
lunch there.

I drank from the fair water by the temple's western approach, and
sat down to smoke under a tree in the precincts. The big cone of
the main tower was just in sight. I had seen the walls before,
and was in no analytical mood; synthesis was enough for me. I
took in with my delighted eyes a roofless dome worthy to be a
temple of some sort, even if it were not, a blue roof that
bettered mere human aspiration, debris testifying to earthly
incompleteness, a broken column with its memento mori all these
were simmering in my vision and my judgment. I half dozed until
the voices of the lunchers began to interest me. They were doing
the rounds rather hastily, lunch having cut into their time, so
short at its very best.

A Church dignitary from our own territory was with them. He
introduced himself to me, and he also introduced an engineer. He
was a patriotic Rhodesian, that dignitary, and denounced McIver,
who had dared to assign to the Ruins a native origin.

'Such nonsense!' he said. 'Believe me, my dear sir, I know the
natives, and I know the natives never built these walls. Poor
creatures; they want firm handl