other end of the world as many rough diamonds as there was in the
whole of that dustbin of a place--diamonds that didn't have to be dug for,
either, only I didn't know them when I saw them."

His narrowed eye gleamed craftily, a mere pin's point of expression in the
direction of Charles, as though expecting a question. But Charles kept
silence, so he went on with his story. He let it be understood that his
luck on the fields was of the worst possible description--never a solitary
stone came his way. But he had no heart for digging. He was always
thinking of the diamonds in that remote spot which he had ignorantly let
slip from his grasp, like the dog in the fable dropping the substance for
the shadow. He would have gone back to look for them, but he'd spent most
of his little capital in that wild-goose chase, and the miserable remnant
oozed away like water in a place where the barest necessaries of life cost
fabulous prices. Soon he became stranded, practically penniless.

It was this precarious moment of his fortunes which his star (his evil
star, he insisted on that) selected to bring him into juxtaposition with
the man whose life was to be inexorably mingled with his own from that
time henceforward. The actual meeting place was a tin-roofed grog shanty
kept by a giant Kaffir woman and a sore-eyed degenerate white man, whose
subjection to his black paramour had earned for him among the blacks on
the field the terrible sobriquet of "White Harry." Here, one night,
Thalassa sat drinking bad beer and planning impossible schemes for
returning to his diamonds at the other end of the world. The place was
empty of other customers. The Kaffir woman slumbered behind the flimsy
planking of the bar, and "White Harry" sat on the counter scraping tunes
out of a little fiddle. Thalassa remembered the tune he was
playing--"Annie Laurie." Upon this scene there entered two young men,
Englishmen. Thalassa discerned that at once by the cut of their jib.
Besides, they ordered Bass beer. Who else but Englishmen would order Bass
beer at five shillings a bottle in a God-forsaken place like that?

"_He_ was one of them." Thalassa moved his hand vaguely in the
direction of St. Fair churchyard. "Smart and lively he was then--not like
what he was afore he died. I took a fancy to him as soon as I set my eyes
on him. He was a man in those days, and I knowed a man when I saw 'un. I
didn't care so much for the looks of the other 'un--Remington was h