ick of
time. He need not now take over the mortgage on Seven Kloofs. Its
owner was going to dear out anyhow; and he himself would be saved a sure
and certain loss.

"Here you are now," he said, "help yourself. Have a weed, too," taking
a cigar out of a box, and shoving the latter across to Wyvern. "So
you're going to clear, are you? Well, I shall miss you, old chap, so
will someone else, I expect--eh? Of course, as acting for Keeling, I've
been in a sort of way a professional enemy, but I haven't really, for
I've more than once kept him from putting the screw on you."

"I know you have, Warren, and it's devilish good of you."

"Oh, that's all right. You see, we can't refuse business unless it's
downright shady, so I couldn't chuck this because you and I are pals.
Besides, I've done you far more good by taking it. If I hadn't, Shafto
would have got it, and I don't think, somehow, you'd have found him any
improvement. Eh?"

"No, indeed," laughed Wyvern, who didn't like Shafto, and whom Shafto
didn't like.

"You'll find it a bit of a wrench parting with your place, Wyvern?"

"Rather. I love every stick and stone on it, although I've only had it
such a short time. Besides--it has associations."

"Of course," laughed the other, significantly. "One of them being that
it has ruined you."

"Well, yes. But even that has carried its compensations."

"What are you going to launch out in next? I know you're a reticent
chap, Wyvern, but we're old pals, and if there's any sort of way in
which I can ever give you a leg up, you know you can rely upon me. I
don't ask with any notion of poking my nose into your private affairs,
you know."

"Well, first of all I'm going to Natal to look up a former friend of
mine. We served together in the Zulu War; in fact, we raced neck to
neck off that infernal Hlobane Mountain, through thousands of raging
devils, and made rather more than a nodding acquaintance with grim old
Death that day."

"By Jove! I should think so. Who is he, by the way?"

"He's trading in Zululand. He thinks I might join him with advantage."

"I see," said Warren, secretly foiled in that he had not got the name.
But he was nothing if not cautious. He could get at that later, while
not seeming too curious. "Well, I hope you'll have luck--and return
triumphant. By the way, didn't you have a bit of a breeze with old Le
Sage the other day?"

"Now how the devil did you get hold of that for a y