now how I ever gave my consent."

"She has commonsense and capability far beyond her years, and you know
it. Now see here, Le Sage. Be reasonable about this, and give me some
sort of a show. If I bring off my plan satisfactorily, I shan't be the
first man whose luck has turned."

"Oh, damn your `plan' and your `luck' too!" retorted the other, now
completely losing his temper. "The first's a fraud and the other's
fudge. Look here, if you weren't so much infernally bigger and stronger
than me, I'd start in now to hammer you within an inch of your life, but
as you are, it's of no use trying."

"No, it isn't," said Wyvern quietly, but not sneeringly.

Le Sage had got up and was pacing up and down feverishly. Wyvern had
never moved. Had he known it, he was at that moment in some
considerable peril. He was sitting right on the edge of the _krantz_,
and the other was behind him; and Le Sage was one of those men who when
they do fairly lose their tempers go nearly mad. Now his face was
ghastly, and he snarled like a cornered animal.

"Your plan's a fraud," he repeated furiously, "and you're a fraud
yourself. You humbugged me into believing you were a man of solid
position, while all the time you were a damned, useless, bankrupt
waster. You sneaked my consent under false pretences. Yes, under false
pretences," he bellowed, "and now I withdraw it. D'you hear? I
withdraw it unconditionally, you--swindler."

Wyvern had risen now, but with no sort of idea of violence, and stood
confronting the infuriated man.

"Now, Le Sage, don't you think all this is rather cowardly on your
part?" he said, in a quiet, expostulatory tone. "I mean because you
must know that you're the one man privileged to say such things to me--
in fact, to go on all day calling me all the frauds and swindlers you
want to, and still remain absolutely immune from retaliation. It's not
fair."

"Not fair, eh?" snarled Le Sage, infuriated by the other's coolness,
though there was nothing in this that was in the least offensive or
taunting. "Well, now, look here. Get away off my place, d'you see?
This is my ground. A mile further on is my boundary. Well, get across
that as soon as ever you like, and don't set foot on my place again, or
by God, I might even blow your brains out."

"Then you'd get hanged or shut up for a considerable time, and would
that be good for Lalante?"

"Go--d'you hear," stamped the furious man. "Go. There's the bo