el, these vagabond memories of hers took point and shape. It was
about these very men that he was talking.

"And think of it!" he was saying, impressively. "It's magnificent enough
for me to make this great hit--but I don't count it as anything at
all by comparison with the fact that I make it at their expense. You
remember the fellows I told you about?" he asked abruptly, deferring to
the confused look on her face.

"Yes--you make it out of them," she repeated, in an uncertain voice. It
occurred to her that she must have been almost asleep. "But did I miss
anything? Have you been telling what it is that you have made?"

"No--that you shall have in good time. You don't seem to realize it,
Louisa. I can hardly realize it myself. I am actually a very rich man.
I can't tell how much I've got--in fact, it can be almost as much as I
like--half a million pounds, I suppose, at the start, if I want to make
it that much. Yes--it takes the breath away, doesn't it? But best of
all--a thousand times best of all--practically every dollar of it comes
out of those Kaffir swine--the very men that tried to rob me, and
that have been trying to ruin me ever since. I tell you what I wish,
Louise--I wish to God there could only be time enough, and I'd take it
all in half-sovereigns--two millions of them, or three millions--and
just untwist every coin, one by one, out from among their heart-strings.
Oh--but it'll be all right as it is. It's enough to make a man feel
religious--to think how those thieves are going to suffer."

"Well" she said, slowly after reflection, "it all rather frightens me."

As if the chill in the air of the cheerless room had suddenly
accentuated itself, she arose, took a match-box from the mantel, and,
stooping, lit the fire.

He looked down at the tall, black-clad figure, bent in stiff awkwardness
over the smoking grate, and his eyes softened. Then he took fresh note
of the room--the faded, threadbare carpet, the sparse old furniture that
had seemed ugly to even his uninformed boyish taste, the dingy walls and
begrimed low ceiling--all pathetic symbols of the bleak life to which
she had been condemned.

"Frightens you?" he queried, with a kind of jovial tenderness, as she
got to her feet; "frightens you, eh? Why, within a month's time, old
lady, you'll be riding in the Park in your own carriage, with niggers
folding their arms up behind, and you'll be taking it all as easy and as
natural as if you'd been born