The man who won

"Handsome, were you? 'Tis more than they held, More than they said. I was ware, and watched. I was the scapegrace, this rat belled The cat, this fool got his whiskers scratched." --ROBERT BROWNING.

The talk had waxed political, and the audience was frankly bored. The man who had been haranguing his mates was hurt at the somewhat too obvious lack of appreciation which his truly democratic sentiments received.

"Ef yer could quit twinin' yerself araound that thar' post a spell, an' listen to a bit o' horse-sense"--he broke off angrily.

"It's usually hoarse when you take the floor, Amurrica," was the surly reply; "but it's blasted little sense I've ever heard come outer your head."

"Ef you was to listen, it 'ud make a powerful deal o' difference to what you heard," snapped Amurrica, whose eloquence was his chief vanity.

"I ain't good at listening," indifferently replied the blond and bearded giant, who was "twinin' hisself araound the post," "onless a man's talkin'; an' that's a fact."

There was a giggle of appreciation among the half-dozen men and youths collected at the gate of the farm enclosure.

"No good, Amurrica; chuck it! Bert'll git there every time," said someone cheerfully.

Amurrica snorted.

"Talkin', indeed! Why, you low-downers in this all-fired continent of Africa, you don' know what talkin' means!"

"Usually means lyin' over in America, don't it?" said Bert casually.

His eyes were fixed on vacancy as he spoke; the chatter of the group around him was nothing but a weariness, like the buzzing of flies. His mind was fixed upon what was going on in the low frame house, with the corrugated iron roof, that stood within the enclosure. He was experiencing something more like anxiety than he had ever felt before in all his four-and-twenty years.

It was oppressively hot. For miles and miles, the pitiless sun lit up the endless veldt, which undulated all around the little township: wild, yet with a dreadful sameness in it.

"As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be," seemed written upon the face of the desert; yet here and there its dignity was scarred, its monotony interfered with, by the ugliness and meanness of human habitation. The beginnings of civilisation, without simplicity as they were without harmony, jarred every sense. The places seemed to be devoid of self-respect or privacy; to consist, in fact, entirely of back premises. Rows of dingy linen flapped upon lines, on ground where the grass was irregularly worn away here and there by the treading of feet. Collections of old meat tins, old kettles, old shoes, heaped upon kitchen refuse, burdened the stale air with miasma. A wretched-looking, lean-to building bore a huge board with the flaunting inscription:

MOUNT PLEASANT BOARDING-HOUSE FOR GENTLEMEN

The gentlemen who boarded there were mostly assembled to-night at the gate of "Lutwyche's."

A little farther away the Vierkleur Hotel fluttered its flag in the heavy air, and rang at night to the coarse laughter and oaths of a set of idlers, attracted to what had been a purely agricultural district by the finding of diamonds.

Lutwyche's lay silent, sweltering in the heat. Round the stoep of the farm-house hungry poultry were congregated; to-day they were being neglected, and they were wisely determined not to suffer in silence.

It was a critical moment in history. All Europe was waiting to know what President Kruger was going to do. It was the period which preceded the sending of his historical ultimatum. The town for days had been buzzing with rumours of war, and Amurrica had spoken great things in the saloon of the Vierkleur. But local interests are strong, and it was not of British supremacy that the men were thinking now.

The sun was going down. They had all, as Amurrica said, quit work, and they were assembled by the barbed wire fence to gather news of the Englishman who lay dying under the corrugated iron roof of Lutwyche's.

Even the quarrelling was listless. It could be seen that Bert's heart was not in it. Where the heart of the huge young Boer was was matter of pretty common knowledge, though there was not a man in the settlement who would have dared to tell him so, except Amurrica, who had his own reasons for not indulging in the perilous amusement.

Presently the door of the silent house opened, and a Kaffir girl came out, with a dirty rug in her hand, from which she proceeded to shake clouds of stifling acrid dust.

"Here, Minnie, Topsy, Hattie, whoever you are, how's the boss--eh?" called one of the loungers.

The girl showed all her teeth in an apparently endless grin.

"You young gentlemen carled to inquire?" she cried, in high appreciation of the family importance. "You brought yo' visitin'-cards--eh?"

"Shut it," said Bert savagely. "How is Mr. Lutwyche?"

"He don' seem not just the right thing to-day, sir, with missus's compulments," grinned the girl, wildly elated by her momentary distinction.

To her intense delight, this last sally caused a giggle among the loafers. She edged nearer to the barbed wire fencing, to prolong this truly delightful conversation; and for a minute or two, idiotic questions and answers pattered across the farm boundary, while Bert's brow grew blacker and blacker.

Suddenly a silence, instant and deep, fell on the gathering. The Kaffir girl scuttled behind a shed with noiseless celerity. From the door of the farm issued two people--Tante Wilma, the Englishman's Boer wife, and striding beside her corpulent bulk, the slim, energetic figure of Carol Mayne, the English mission priest in charge of the station. Tante Wilma wore her most repulsive expression, her sandy eyebrows lowering over her cunning little eyes. Ten years ago she had been a handsome woman, in a redundant style; but six children and an invalid husband had reduced her form to shapelessness and her temper to rags and tatters.

She hated the English cleric, and could not bear that he should come and see her husband. The Boer Predikant would have sat and sympathised with her over his coffee for a couple of hours after his professional visit to the sick man. Carol Mayne never seemed to have an adequate idea of the importance of this woman, who owned half Slabbert's Poort, and had married her English overseer, a widower with a little girl of his own.

She was evidently accompanying the young man from the house much against her will. About half way across the yard, becoming perhaps aware of the audience at the gate, the clergyman halted, just out of earshot. He seemed earnestly recommending some particular course of conduct to Mrs. Lutwyche, who stood sullenly before him, hostility in every line of her coarse face.

The group of men at the gate dropped away silently, singly or in pairs, avoiding the parson; and Bert was left alone, his sullen scowl fixed upon the house, as though willing it to render up the face he had stood there for hours longing to see.

After a while, Mr. Mayne, having finished his colloquy with Tante Wilma, lifted his hat with that unconscious English University manner which had piqued her in her husband, but which now she hated as only the ignorant can hate the thing that they can never understand. The young Englishman's parting salutation, delivered so entirely as a matter of course, belonged to an order of things which, had she been able, Tante Wilma would have destroyed, ravaged, trampled under her gross feet.

She stood glowering upon him as he made straight for the gate by which Bert still lounged. And she was pleased to note that the young man made no effort to open it for his passage.

"Good evening, Mestaer!" said Mr. Mayne, as he reached the gate. "How's the world treating you?"

"I'm ---- if I care how it treats me," was the engaging response.

The smile that passed over Mayne's face was particularly humorous and winning.

"Don't care came to a bad end," he said, "and that's what I particularly hope won't happen to you. Are you going my way?"

"No; I'm staying here, if you're so mighty curious to know my plans," was the answer, given with a discourtesy so studied that to notice it would be to allow the speaker to fancy that he had "scored."

The rudeness must, of course, have been obvious to the priest, but he disregarded it entirely. A smile again flickered over his face, as of one who holds a trump card. "Well, then, good-night!" he said briskly, opening the gate at once, and passing through it with an air of having no time to waste.