mind whether to tell you about it or not.
Let's see--this is Thursday; did I see you Tuesday? At any rate, the
scheme didn't dawn on me myself until toward evening Tuesday.
But yesterday, of course, I could have told you--and again this
afternoon--but, as I say, I couldn't make up my mind. Once I had it on
the tip of my tongue--but somehow I didn't. And you--you never gave me a
hint that you saw what was going on."

Again Lord Plowden smiled. "I voted with you," he put in softly.

Thorpe laughed, and relit his cigar. "Well, I couldn't have asked
anything better than this," he declared once again. "It beats all the
rest put together, to my mind."

"Perhaps I don't quite follow your meaning," commented the other
tentatively.

"Why man," Thorpe explained, hesitating a little in his choice of words,
but speaking with evident fervour; "I was more anxious about you--and
the way you'd take it--than about anything else. I give you my word I
was. I couldn't tell at all how you'd feel about the thing. You might
think that it was all right, and then again you might round on me--or
no, I don't mean quite that--but you might say it wasn't good enough for
you, and wash your hands of the whole affair. And I can't tell you what
a relief it is to find that you--that you're satisfied. Now I can go
ahead."

"Ah, yes--ahead," said the younger man, thoughtfully. "Do you mind
telling me--you see I'm quite in the dark as to details--how much
further ahead we are likely to go? I comprehend the general nature of
our advance--but how far off is the goal you have in sight?"

"God knows!" answered Thorpe, with a rising thrill of excitement in his
voice. "I don't give it any limit. I don't see why we should stop at
all. We've got them in such a position that--why, good heavens! we can
squeeze them to death, crush them like quartz." He chuckled grimly at
the suggestion of his simile. "We'll get more ounces to the ton out of
our crushings than they ever heard of on the Rand, too."

"Might I ask," interposed the other, "who may 'they' be?"

Thorpe hesitated, and knitted his brows in the effort to remember names.
"Oh, there are a lot of them," he said, vaguely. "I think I told you
of the way that Kaffir crowd pretended to think well of me, and let me
believe they were going to take me up, and then, because I wouldn't give
them everything--the very shirt off my back--turned and put their knife
into me. I don't know them apart, hardly--they've a